Black Strings and p-Branes are Unstable

TL;DR

This paper studies the stability of black strings and p-branes in string theory, showing that they are unstable under certain perturbations unless extra dimensions are compactified below a critical scale, with implications for cosmic censorship.

Contribution

It demonstrates the instability of black strings and branes in certain conditions and discusses stabilization via compactification, extending understanding of higher-dimensional black objects.

Findings

Unstable modes exist for certain frequencies and wavelengths in extra dimensions.

Compactifying extra dimensions below a critical scale stabilizes these objects.

Implications for cosmic censorship are discussed.

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of small perturbations around black strings and branes which are low energy solutions of string theory. For simplicity we focus attention on the zero charge case and show that there are unstable modes for a range of time frequency and wavelength in the extra $10-D$ dimensions. These perturbations can be stabililized if the extra dimensions are compactified to a scale smaller than the minimum wavelength for which instability occurs and thus will not affect large astrophysical black holes in four dimensions. We comment on the implications of this result for the Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis.