On the Search for Multicenter AdS Black Holes from M-theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability and potential configurations of multicenter AdS black holes in M-theory, revealing stable and metastable states and discussing implications for holographic models of glassy phases.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of probe brane potentials around AdS black holes in M-theory, identifying conditions for stable multicenter solutions.

Findings

Existence of stable and metastable multicenter AdS black holes outside the horizon.

Identification of instabilities towards spacetime-filling M2 brane nucleation.

Insights into holographic descriptions of glassy phases of matter.

Abstract

We study the effective potentials for various probe branes surrounding AdS$_4$ black holes with massive halos in consistent truncations of M-theory on the Sasaki-Einstein$_7$ manifolds $Q^{111}$ and $M^{111}$. These probes are either M2 branes extended in spacetime or "particle-like" probes such as internally wrapped M2 branes and, upon reduction to type IIA string theory, D6 branes corresponding to baryon operators in the dual Chern-Simons theory. We find both global and local minima of the potential outside the horizon, indicating the existence of stable and metastable multicenter AdS black holes in the extreme mass ratio regime, at fixed temperature and charges. For the planar case, we also find an instability towards nucleation of spacetime-filling M2 branes. With this analysis, we address some open questions on the holographic description of glassy phases of matter.