2004/09/23 by Matthew Kleban, M. Kleban, Massimo Porrati +3 · 2 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Mathematical Physics Problems #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Brane #Compactification (mathematics) #Conformal map #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Laplace operator #Mathematical analysis #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Physics #Pure mathematics #Quantum mechanics #String theory #Theoretical physics #Upper and lower bounds #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2005/08/016
published as JHEP0508:016,2005 · 18 pages and 5 figures
arxiv created 2004/09/23 · openalex publication_date 2005/08/03 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We discuss two types of instabilities which may arise in string theory compactified to asymptotically AdS spaces: perturbative, due to discrete modes in the spectrum of the Laplacian, and non-perturbative, due to brane nucleation. In the case of three dimensional Einstein manifolds, we completely characterize the presence of these instabilities, and in higher dimensions we provide a partial classification. The analysis may be viewed as an extension of the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. One interesting result is that, apart from a very special class of exceptions, all Euclidean asymptotically AdS spaces with more than one conformal boundary component are unstable, if the compactification admits BPS branes or scalars saturating the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. As examples, we analyze quotients of AdS in any dimension and AdS Taub-NUT spaces, and show a space which was previously discussed in the context of AdS/CFT is unstable both perturbatively and non-perturbatively.