Properties of non-extremal enhancons

TL;DR

This paper analyzes non-extremal supergravity solutions called enhancons, showing that physically relevant solutions are stable and violate energy conditions, thus refining understanding of their physical viability.

Contribution

It demonstrates the unphysical nature of shell branch solutions and confirms the stability of horizon branch solutions through numerical perturbation analysis.

Findings

Shell branch solutions violate the weak energy condition.

Horizon branch solutions are stable against linear perturbations.

Supports the physical relevance of horizon branch supergravity solutions.

Abstract

We study the supergravity solutions describing non-extremal enhancons. There are two branches of solutions: a `shell branch' connected to the extremal solution, and a `horizon branch' which connects to the Schwarzschild black hole at large mass. We show that the shell branch solutions violate the weak energy condition, and are hence unphysical. We investigate linearized perturbations of the horizon branch and the extremal solution numerically, completing an investigation initiated in a previous paper. We show that these solutions are stable against the perturbations we consider. This provides further evidence that these latter supergravity solutions are capturing some of the true physics of the enhancon.