A new dynamical instability in Anti-de-Sitter spacetime

TL;DR

This paper uncovers a novel dynamical instability in Anti-de-Sitter spacetime, revealing a stable thermodynamic phase that is nonetheless dynamically unstable, with implications for dual strongly coupled field theories.

Contribution

It introduces fully dynamical solutions showing a new instability in AdS spacetime with a rich scalar potential, linking nonlinear dynamics to linear perturbation spectra.

Findings

Identification of a thermodynamically stable but dynamically unstable black brane

Demonstration of the instability through nonlinear evolution

Interpretation of results via linearized perturbation spectrum

Abstract

We present fully dynamical solutions to Einstein-scalar theory in asymptotically Anti-de-Sitter spacetime with a scalar potential containing particularly rich physics. Depending on one parameter in the potential we find an especially interesting regime, which exhibits a thermodynamically stable, but dynamically unstable black brane, even at zero momentum. We show this using the non-linear dynamics, and give a clear interpretation in terms of the spectrum of linearized perturbations. Our results translate directly to their dual strongly coupled non-conformal field theories.