Excitation of an Atom by a Uniformly Accelerated Mirror through Virtual Transitions.

We find that uniformly accelerated motion of a mirror yields excitation of a static two-level atom with simultaneous emission of a real photon. This occurs because of virtual transitions with probability governed by the Planck factor involving the photon frequency ν and the Unruh temperature. The result is different from the Unruh radiation of an accelerated atom, which is governed by the frequency of the atom, ω, rather than frequency of the emitted photon. We also find that the excitation probability oscillates as a function of the atomic position because of interference between contributions from the waves incident on and reflected from the mirror.

Quantum optics approach to radiation from atoms falling into a black hole.

We show that atoms falling into a black hole (BH) emit acceleration radiation which, under appropriate initial conditions, looks to a distant observer much like (but is different from) Hawking BH radiation. In particular, we find the entropy of the acceleration radiation via a simple laser-like analysis. We call this entropy horizon brightened acceleration radiation (HBAR) entropy to distinguish it from the BH entropy of Bekenstein and Hawking. This analysis also provides insight into the Einstein principle of equivalence between acceleration and gravity.

Naked Black Hole Firewalls.

In the firewall proposal, it is assumed that the firewall lies near the event horizon and should not be observable except by infalling observers, who are presumably terminated at the firewall. However, if the firewall is located near where the horizon would have been, based on the spacetime evolution up to that time, later quantum fluctuations of the Hawking emission rate can cause the "teleological" event horizon to have migrated to the inside of the firewall location, rendering the firewall naked. In principle, the firewall can be arbitrarily far outside the horizon. This casts doubt about the notion that firewalls are the "most conservative" solution to the information loss paradox.

Local invariants vanishing on stationary horizons: a diagnostic for locating black holes.

Inspired by the example of Abdelqader and Lake for the Kerr metric, we construct local scalar polynomial curvature invariants that vanish on the horizon of any stationary black hole: the squared norms of the wedge products of n linearly independent gradients of scalar polynomial curvature invariants, where n is the local cohomogeneity of the spacetime.

Complete integrability of geodesic motion in general higher-dimensional rotating black-hole spacetimes.

We explicitly exhibit n-1=[D/2]-1 constants of motion for geodesics in the general D-dimensional Kerr-NUT-AdS rotating black hole spacetime, arising from contractions of even powers of the 2-form obtained by contracting the geodesic velocity with the dual of the contraction of the velocity with the (D-2)-dimensional Killing-Yano tensor. These constants of motion are functionally independent of each other and of the D-n+1 constants of motion that arise from the metric and the D-n=[(D+1)/2] Killing vectors, making a total of D independent constants of motion in all dimensions D. The Poisson brackets of all pairs of these D constants are zero, so geodesic motion in these spacetimes is completely integrable.

New Einstein-Sasaki spaces in five and higher dimensions.

We obtain infinite classes of new Einstein-Sasaki metrics on complete and nonsingular manifolds. They arise, after Euclideanization, from BPS limits of the rotating Kerr-de Sitter black hole metrics. The new Einstein-Sasaki spaces L(p,q,r) in five dimensions have cohomogeneity 2 and U(1) x U(1) x U(1) isometry group. They are topologically S(2) x S(3). Their AdS/CFT duals describe quiver theories on the four-dimensional boundary of AdS(5). We also obtain new Einstein-Sasaki spaces of cohomogeneity n in all odd dimensions D = 2n + 1 > or = 5, with U(1)(n + 1) isometry.

Rotating black holes in higher dimensions with a cosmological constant.

We present the metric for a rotating black hole with a cosmological constant and with arbitrary angular momenta in all higher dimensions. The metric is given in both Kerr-Schild and the Boyer-Lindquist form. In the Euclidean-signature case, we also obtain smooth compact Einstein spaces on associated S(D-2) bundles over S2, infinitely many for each odd D>/=5. Applications to string theory and M-theory are indicated.

Positive mass from holographic causality.

For (n+1)-dimensional asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetimes which have holographic duals on their n-dimensional conformal boundaries, we show that the imposition of causality on the boundary theory is sufficient to prove positivity of mass for the spacetime when n> or =3, without the assumption of any local energy condition. We make crucial use of a time-delay formula relating the Ashtekar-Magnon mass of the spacetime to the time delay of a bulk null curve relative to that of a boundary null geodesic. We also discuss holographic causality for the negative mass AdS soliton and its implications for the positive energy conjecture of Horowitz and Myers.