Three dimensional topologically massive gravity (TMG) with a negative cosmological constant -\ell^{-2} and positive Newton constant G admits an AdS_3 vacuum solution for any value of the graviton mass \mu. These are all known to be perturbatively unstable except at the recently explored chiral point \mu\ell=1. However we show herein that for every value of \mu\ell< 3 there are two other (potentially stable) vacuum solutions given by SL(2,R)x U(1)-invariant warped AdS_3 geometries, with a timelike or spacelike U(1) isometry. Critical behavior occurs at \mu\ell=3, where the warping transitions from a stretching to a squashing, and there are a pair of warped solutions with a null U(1) isometry. For \mu\ell>3, there are known warped black hole solutions which are asymptotic to warped AdS_3. We show that these black holes are discrete quotients of warped AdS_3 just as BTZ black holes are discrete quotients of ordinary AdS_3. Moreover new solutions of this type, relevant to any theory with warped AdS_3 solutions, are exhibited. Finally we note that the black hole thermodynamics is consistent with the hypothesis that, for \mu\ell>3, the warped AdS_3 ground state of TMG is holographically dual to a 2D boundary CFT with central charges c_R={15(\mu\ell)^2+81\over G\mu((\mu\ell)^2+27)} and c_L={12 \mu\ell^2\over G((\mu\ell)^2+27)}.

Quantum gravity in the region very near the horizon of an extreme Kerr black hole (whose angular momentum and mass are related by J=GM^2) is considered. It is shown that consistent boundary conditions exist, for which the asymptotic symmetry generators form one copy of the Virasoro algebra with central charge c_L=12J / \hbar. This implies that the near-horizon quantum states can be identified with those of (a chiral half of) a two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT). Moreover, in the extreme limit, the Frolov-Thorne vacuum state reduces to a thermal density matrix with dimensionless temperature T_L=1/2\pi and conjugate energy given by the zero mode generator, L_0, of the Virasoro algebra. Assuming unitarity, the Cardy formula then gives a microscopic entropy S_{micro}=2\pi J / \hbar for the CFT, which reproduces the macroscopic Bekenstein-Hawking entropy S_{macro}=Area / 4\hbar G. The results apply to any consistent unitary quantum theory of gravity with a Kerr solution. We accordingly conjecture that extreme Kerr black holes are holographically dual to a chiral two-dimensional conformal field theory with central charge c_L=12J / \hbar, and in particular that the near-extreme black hole GRS 1915+105 is approximately dual to a CFT with c_L \sim 2 \times 10^{79}.

We show that the linearization of all exact solutions of classical chiral gravity around the AdS3 vacuum have positive energy. Nonchiral and negative-energy solutions of the linearized equations are infrared divergent at second order, and so are removed from the spectrum. In other words, chirality is confined and the equations of motion have linearization instabilities. We prove that the only stationary, axially symmetric solutions of chiral gravity are BTZ black holes, which have positive energy. It is further shown that classical log gravity—the theory with logarithmically relaxed boundary conditions—has finite asymptotic symmetry generators but is not chiral and hence may be dual at the quantum level to a logarithmic conformal field theories (CFT). Moreover we show that log gravity contains chiral gravity within it as a decoupled charge superselection sector. We formally evaluate the Euclidean sum over geometries of chiral gravity and show that it gives precisely the holomorphic extremal CFT partition function. The modular invariance and integrality of the expansion coefficients of this partition function are consistent with the existence of an exact quantum theory of chiral gravity. We argue that the problem of quantizing chiral gravity is the holographic dual of the problem of constructing an extremal CFT, while quantizing log gravity is dual to the problem of constructing a logarithmic extremal CFT.

The superradiant scattering of a scalar field with frequency and angular momentum (ω, m) by a near-extreme Kerr black hole with mass and spin (M, J) was derived in the seventies by Starobinsky, Churilov, Press and Teukolsky. In this paper we show that for frequencies scaled to the superradiant bound the full functional dependence on (ω, m, M, J) of the scattering amplitudes is precisely reproduced by a dual two-dimensional conformal field theory in which the black hole corresponds to a specific thermal state and the scalar field to a specific operator. This striking agreement corroborates a conjectured Kerr/CFT correspondence.

Near-superradiant scattering of charged scalars and fermions by a near-extreme Kerr-Newman black hole and photons and gravitons by a near-extreme Kerr black hole are computed as certain Fourier transforms of correlators in a two-dimensional conformal field theory. The results agree with the classic spacetime calculations from the 1970s, thereby providing good evidence for a conjectured Kerr-Newman/CFT correspondence.

The presence of a massive scalar field near a Kerr black hole is known to produce instabilities associated with bound superradiant modes. In this paper we show that for massive fermions, rather than inducing an instability, the bound superradiant modes condense and form a Fermi sea which extends well outside the ergosphere. The shape of this Fermi sea in phase space and various other properties are analytically computed in the semiclassical WKB approximation. The low energy effective theory near the black hole is described by ripples in the Fermi surface. Expressions are derived for their dispersion relation and the effective force on particles which venture into the sea.

We show that the spinning magnetic one-brane in minimal five-dimensional supergravity admits a decoupling limit that interpolates smoothly between a self-dual null orbifold of AdS_3 \times S^2 and the near-horizon limit of the extremal Kerr black hole times a circle. We use this interpolating solution to understand the field theory dual to spinning M5 branes as a deformation of the Discrete Light Cone Quantized (DLCQ) Maldacena-Stominger-Witten (MSW) CFT. In particular, the conformal weights of the operators dual to the deformation around AdS_3 \times S^2 are calculated. We present pieces of evidence showing that a CFT dual to the four-dimensional extremal Kerr can be obtained from the deformed MSW CFT.

Extremal but non-supersymmetric charged black holes with SU(2)_L spin in IIB string theory compactified to five dimensions on K^3 x S^1 are considered. These have a near-horizon or NHEK region with an enhanced SL(2,R)_L conformal symmetry. It is shown that the NHEK geometry has a second, inequivalent, asymptotically flat extension in which the radius of the S^1 becomes infinite but the radius of the angular circles of SU(2)_L orbits approach a constant. The asymptotic charges associated to the second solution identify it as a 5D D1-D5-Taub-NUT black string with certain nonzero worldvolume charge densities, temperatures and chemical potentials. The dual of the NHEK geometry is then identified as an IR limit of this wrapped brane configuration.

String theory contains solutions with SL(2,R)_R x U(1)_L-invariant warped AdS3 (WAdS3) factors arising as continuous deformations of ordinary AdS3 factors. We propose that some of these are holographically dual to the IR limits of nonlocal dipole-deformed 2D D-brane gauge theories, referred to as "dipole CFTs". Neither the bulk nor boundary theories are currently well-understood, and consequences of the proposed duality for both sides is investigated. The bulk entropy-area law suggests that dipole CFTs have (at large N) a high-energy density of states which does not depend on the deformation parameter. Putting the boundary theory on a spatial circle leads to closed timelike curves in the bulk, suggesting a relation of the latter to dipole-type nonlocality.

We show that the six-dimensional uplift of the five-dimensional Near-Horizon-Extremal-Kerr (NHEK) spacetime can be obtained from an AdS_3 X S^3 solution by a sequence of supergravity - but not string theory - dualities. We present three ways of viewing these pseudo-dualities: as a series of transformations in the STU model, as a combination of Melvin twists and T-dualities and, finally, as a sequence of two generalized spectral flows and a coordinate transformation. We then use these to find an infinite family of asymptotically flat embeddings of NHEK spacetimes in string theory, parameterized by the arbitrary values of the moduli at infinity. Our construction reveals the existence of non-perturbative deformations of asymptotically-NHEK spacetimes, which correspond to the bubbling of nontrivial cycles wrapped by flux, and paves the way for finding a microscopic field theory dual to NHEK which involves Melvin twists of the D1-D5 gauge theory. Our analysis also clarifies the meaning of the generalized spectral flow solution-generating techniques that have been recently employed in the literature.

String theory on NS-NS AdS_3 x S^3 admits an exactly marginal deformation which breaks the SL(2,R)_R x SL(2,R)_L isometry of AdS_3 down to SL(2,R)_R x U(1)_L. The holographic dual is an exotic and only partially understood type of two-dimensional CFT with a reduced unbroken global conformal symmetry group. In this paper we study the deformed theory on the string worldsheet. It is found to be related by a spectral flow which is nonlocal in spacetime to the undeformed worldsheet theory. An exact formula for the spectrum of massive strings is presented.

Classical two-dimensional Liouville gravity is often considered in conformal gauge which has a residual left and right Virasoro symmetry algebra. We consider an alternate, chiral, gauge which has a residual right Virasoro Kac-Moody algebra, and no left Virasoro algebra. The Kac-Moody zero mode is the left-moving energy. Dirac brackets of the constrained Hamiltonian theory are derived, and the residual symmetries are shown to be generated by integrals of the conserved chiral currents. The central charge and Kac-Moody level are computed. The possible existence of a corresponding quantum theory is discussed.

New chiral boundary conditions are found for quantum gravity with matter on AdS3. The associated asymptotic symmetry group is generated by a single right-moving U(1) Kac-Moody-Virasoro algebra with c_R = 3l/2G. The Kac-Moody zero mode generates global left-moving translations and equals, for a BTZ black hole, the sum of the total mass and spin. The level is positive about the global vacuum and negative in the black hole sector, corresponding to ergosphere formation. Realizations arising in Chern-Simons gravity and string theory are analyzed. The new boundary conditions are shown to naturally arise for warped AdS3 in the limit that the warp parameter is taken to zero.

We obtain the asymptotic symmetry algebra of Chern-Simons theory with Dirichlet boundary conditions for fixed chemical potential. These boundary conditions are obeyed by higher spin black holes. For each embedding of into , we show that the asymptotic symmetry group is independent of the chemical potential. On the one hand, starting from AdS in the principal embedding, we show that the symmetry is preserved upon turning on perturbatively spin 3 chemical potentials. On the other hand, starting from AdS in the diagonal embedding, we show that the symmetry is preserved upon turning on finite spin 3/2 chemical potentials. We also make connections between the canonical Lagrangian formalism and integrability methods based on the n = 3 KdV (Boussinesq) hierarchy.

In the context of recently proposed holographic dualities between higher spin theories in AdS3 and 1+1-dimensional CFTs with W-symmetry algebras, we revisit the definition of higher spin black hole thermodynamics and the dictionary between bulk fields and dual CFT operators. We build a canonical formalism based on three ingredients: a gauge-invariant definition of conserved charges and chemical potentials in the presence of higher spin black holes, a canonical definition of entropy in the bulk, and a bulk-to-boundary dictionary aligned with the asymptotic symmetry algebra. We show that our canonical formalism shares the same formal structure as the so-called holomorphic formalism, but differs in the definition of charges and chemical potentials and in the bulk-to-boundary dictionary. Most importantly, we show that it admits a consistent CFT interpretation. We discuss the spin-2 and spin-3 cases in detail and generalize our construction to theories based on the hs[\lambda] algebra, and on the sl(N,R) algebra for any choice of sl(2,R) embedding.

We present an ansatz which makes the equations of motion more tractable for the simplest of Vasiliev’s four-dimensional higher spin theories. The ansatz is similar to axial gauge in electromagnetism. We present a broad class of solutions in the gauge where the spatial connection vanishes, and we discuss the lift of one of these solutions to a full spacetime solution via a gauge transformation.

We revisit some properties of AdS2 Einstein-Maxwell gravity with the aim of reconciling apparently conflicting results in prior literature. We show that the two dimensional theory can be obtained as a dimensional reduction of the three dimensional Einstein gravity with the CSS boundary condition. In general, this theory on AdS2 can be viewed as an effective theory of the near horizon geometry of a (near-)extremal black hole. We provide an interpretation of our results in terms of the microscopic description of an extremal black hole.

For spacetimes that are not asymptotic to anti-de Sitter Space (non AAdS), we adapt the Lewkowycz-Maldacena procedure to find the holographic entanglement entropy. The key observation, which to our knowledge is not very well appreciated, is that asymptotic boundary conditions play an essential role on extending the replica trick to the bulk. For non AAdS, we expect the following three main modifications: (1) the expansion near the special surface has to be compatible with the asymptotic expansion; (2) periodic conditions are imposed to coordinates on the phase space with diagonalized symplectic structure, not to all fields appearing in the action; (3) evaluating the entanglement functional using the boundary term method amounts to evaluating the presymplectic structure at the special surface, where some additional exact form may contribute. An explicit calculation is carried out for three-dimensional warped anti-de Sitter spacetime (WAdS3) in a consistent truncation of string theory, the so-called S-dual dipole theory. It turns out that the generalized gravitational entropy in WAdS3 is captured by the least action of a charged particle in WAdS3 space, or equivalently, by the geodesic length in an auxiliary AdS3. Consequently, the bulk calculation agrees with the CFT results, providing another piece of evidence for the WAdS3/CFT2 correspondence.

In [1] it was observed that asymptotic boundary conditions play an important role in the study of holographic entanglement beyond AdS/CFT. In particular, the Ryu-Takayanagi proposal must be modified for warped AdS 3 (WAdS 3) with Dirichlet boundary conditions. In this paper, we consider AdS 3 and WAdS 3 with Dirichlet-Neumann bound-ary conditions. The conjectured holographic duals are warped conformal field theories (WCFTs), featuring a Virasoro-Kac-Moody algebra. We provide a holographic calculation of the entanglement entropy and Rényi entropy using AdS 3 /WCFT and WAdS 3 /WCFT du-alities. Our bulk results are consistent with the WCFT results derived by Castro-Hofman-Iqbal using the Rindler method. Comparing with [1], we explicitly show that the holographic entanglement entropy is indeed affected by boundary conditions. Both results differ from the Ryu-Takayanagi proposal, indicating new relations between spacetime geometry and quantum entanglement for holographic dualities beyond AdS/CFT.

We explore an identity between two branching graphs and propose a physical meaning in the context of the gauge-gravity correspondence. From the mathematical point of view, the identity equates probabilities associated with GT, the branching graph of the unitary groups, with probabilities associated with Y, the branching graph of the symmetric groups. In order to furnish the identity with physical meaning, we exactly reproduce these probabilities as the square of three point functions involving certain hook-shaped backgrounds. We study these backgrounds in the context of LLM geometries and discover that they are domain walls interpolating two AdS spaces with different radii. We also find that, in certain cases, the probabilities match the eigenvalues of some observables, the embedding chain charges. We finally discuss a holographic interpretation of the mathematical identity through our results.

We propose a construction of Kahler and non-Kahler Calabi-Yau manifolds by branched double covers of twistor spaces. In this construction we use the twistor spaces of four-manifolds with self-dual conformal structures, with the examples of connected sum of n P2s. We also construct K3-fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds from the branched double covers of the blow-ups of the twistor spaces. These manifolds can be used in heterotic string compactifications to four dimensions. We also construct stable and polystable vector bundles. Some classes of these vector bundles can give rise to supersymmetric grand unified models with three generations of quarks and leptons in four dimensions.

We construct a generalization of twistor spaces of hypercomplex manifolds and hyper-Kahler manifolds M, by generalizing the twistor P1 to a more general complex manifold Q. The resulting manifold X is complex if and only if Q admits a holomorphic map to P1. We make branched double covers of these manifolds. Some class of these branched double covers can give rise to non-Kahler Calabi-Yau manifolds. We show that these manifolds X and their branched double covers are non-Kahler. In the cases that Q is a balanced manifold, the resulting manifold X and its special branched double cover have balanced Hermitian metrics.

The phase space of a particle or a mechanical system contains an intrinsic symplectic structure, and hence, it is a symplectic manifold. Recently, new invariants for symplectic manifolds in terms of cohomologies of differential forms have been introduced by Tseng and Yau. Here, we discuss the physical motivation behind the new symplectic invariants and analyze these invariants for phase space, i.e., the non-compact cotangent bundle.

A celebrated theorem of Kapranov states that the Atiyah class of the tangent bundle of a complex manifold X makes TX[−1] into a Lie algebra object in D+(X), the bounded below derived category of coherent sheaves on X. Furthermore, Kapranov proved that, for a Kähler manifold X, the Dolbeault resolution \Omega(T{1,0} X ) of TX[−1]is an L∞ algebra. In this paper, we prove that Kapranov’s theorem holds in much wider generality for vector bundles over Lie pairs. Given a Lie pair (L, A), i.e. a Lie algebroid L together with a Lie subalgebroid A, we define the Atiyah class αE of an A-module E as the obstruction to the existence of an A-compatible L-connection on E. We prove that the Atiyah classes αL/A and αE respectively make L/A[−1] and E[−1] into a Lie algebra and a Liealgebra module in the bounded below derived category D+(A), where A is the abelian category of left U(A)-modules and U(A) is the universal enveloping algebra of A. Moreover,we produce a homotopy Leibniz algebra and a homotopy Leibniz module stemming from the Atiyah classes of L/A and E, and inducing the afore said Lie structures in D+(A).

In this paper, we construct the bilinear identities for the wave functions of an extended Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) hierarchy, which is the KP hierarchy with particular extended flows. By introducing an auxiliary parameter, whose flow corresponds to the so-called squared eigenfunction symmetry of KP hierarchy, we find the tau-function for this extended KP hierarchy. It is shown that the bilinear identities will generate all the Hirota's bilinear equations for the zero-curvature forms of the extended KP hierarchy, which includes two types of KP equation with self-consistent sources (KPSCS). It seems that the Hirota's bilinear equations obtained in this paper for KPSCS are in a simpler form by comparing with the results by X.B. Hu and H.Y. Wang.