Negative Energy in String Theory and Cosmic Censorship Violation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in N=8 supergravity, solutions with negative energy can exist without violating stability, leading to potential violations of cosmic censorship, but these singularities may be resolved in full string theory.

Contribution

It shows the existence of negative energy solutions in supergravity with implications for cosmic censorship and discusses their resolution in string theory.

Findings

Negative energy solutions exist in N=8 supergravity.

Some solutions evolve into naked singularities, violating cosmic censorship.

Full string theory may resolve these singularities.

Abstract

We find asymptotically anti de Sitter solutions in N=8 supergravity which have negative total energy. This is possible since the boundary conditions required for the positive energy theorem are stronger than those required for finite mass (and allowed by string theory). But stability of the anti de Sitter vacuum is still ensured by the positivity of a modified energy, which includes an extra surface term. Some of the negative energy solutions describe classical evolution of nonsingular initial data to naked singularities. Since there is an open set of such solutions, cosmic censorship is violated generically in supergravity. Using the dual field theory description, we argue that these naked singularities will be resolved in the full string theory.