In this work, we study geometrical and physical properties of exact spacetimes that belong to non-expanding Pleba'nski-Demia'nski class. It is a family of solutions of type D that also belong to the Kundt class, and contain seven arbitrary parameters including a cosmological constant. We present here the results of three extensive articles, each focusing on a different aspect of the problem. In the first article, we investigate the meaning of individual parame- ters in the non-expanding Pleba'nski-Demia'nski metric. First, we set almost all parameters to zero and obtain Minkowski and (anti-)de Sitter backgrounds. Af- terwards, we allow other parameters to be non-zero and we study the B-metrics, non-singular "anti-NUT" solutions and conclude with the full electrovacuum Pleba'nski-Demia'nski metric. In the second article, we focus on the de Sitter and anti-de Sitter backgrounds where we present and analyse 11 new diagonal metric forms of (anti-)de Sitter spacetime. We find five-dimensional parametriza- tions, draw coordinate surfaces and conformal diagrams. In the third article, we show that the AII-metric together with the BI-metric describes gravitational field around a tachyon on both Minkowski and (anti-)de Sitter backgrounds. Fi- nally, in order to better understand the global structure and...

<p>This thesis consists of two papers on the spectral geometry of locally symmetric spaces of Riemannian and Lorentzian signature. Both works are concerned with the idea of relating analysis on such spaces to structures on their boundaries.</p><p>The first paper is motivated by a conjecture of Patterson on the Selberg zeta function of Kleinian groups. We consider geometrically finite hyperbolic cylinders with non-compact Riemann surfaces of finite area as cross sections. For these cylinders, we present a detailed investigation of the Bunke-Olbrich extension operator under the assumption that the cross section of the cylinder has one cusp. We establish the meromorphic continuation of the extension of Eisenstein series and incomplete theta series through the limit set. Furthermore, we derive explicit formulas for the residues of the extension operator in terms of boundary values of automorphic eigenfunctions.</p><p>The motivation for the second paper comes from conformal geometry in Lorentzian signature. We prove the existence and uniqueness of a sequence of differential intertwining operators for spherical principal series representations, which are realized on boundaries of anti de Sitter spaces. Algebraically, these operators correspond to homomorphisms of generalized Verma modules. We relate these families to the asymptotics of eigenfunctions on anti de Sitter spaces.</p>

This thesis consists of two papers on the spectral geometry of locally symmetric spaces of Riemannian and Lorentzian signature. Both works are concerned with the idea of relating analysis on such spaces to structures on their boundaries. The first paper is motivated by a conjecture of Patterson on the Selberg zeta function of Kleinian groups. We consider geometrically finite hyperbolic cylinders with non-compact Riemann surfaces of finite area as cross sections. For these cylinders, we present a detailed investigation of the Bunke-Olbrich extension operator under the assumption that the cross section of the cylinder has one cusp. We establish the meromorphic continuation of the extension of Eisenstein series and incomplete theta series through the limit set. Furthermore, we derive explicit formulas for the residues of the extension operator in terms of boundary values of automorphic eigenfunctions. The motivation for the second paper comes from conformal geometry in Lorentzian signature. We prove the existence and uniqueness of a sequence of differential intertwining operators for spherical principal series representations, which are realized on boundaries of anti de Sitter spaces. Algebraically, these operators correspond to homomorphisms of generalized Verma modules. We relate these families to the asymptotics of eigenfunctions on anti de Sitter spaces.

Dumb holes (also known as acoustic black holes) are fluid flows which include an "acoustic horizon:" a surface, analogous to a gravitational horizon, beyond which sound may pass but never classically return. Soundwaves in these flows will therefore experience "effective geometries" which are identical to black hole spacetimes up to a conformal factor. By adjusting the parameters of the fluid flow, it is possible to create an effective geometry which is conformal to the Anti-de Sitter black hole spacetime- a geometry which has recieved a great deal of attention in recent years due to its conjectured holographic duality to Conformal Field Theories. While we would not expect an acoustic analogue of the AdS-CFT correspondence to exist, this dumb hole provides a means, at least in principle, of experimentally testing the theoretical properties of the AdS spacetime. In particular, I have calculated the quasinormal mode spectrum of this acoustic geometry. / Graduate / 0986 / 0753 / jpbabb@yahoo.ca

The subject of study of this thesis is the Kerr-Newman-(anti-)de Sitter space- time, a rotating and charged exact black-hole solution of the Einstein-Maxwell equations with a non-zero cosmological constant. In the first part of the thesis we examine admissible extremal configurations, present the corresponding Penrose diagrams, and investigate the effects of frame-dragging. In the second part, we follow the motion of charged particles via the Lagrangian formalism, focusing on the equatorial plane and the axis where we arrived at some analytic results con- cerning the trajectories. Static particles, effective potentials and - in the case of the equatorial plane - stationary circular orbits are examined. We also perform numerical simulations of particle motion to be able to check our analytic results and also to foster our intuition regarding the behaviour of the test particles. The last part concerns quantum tunnelling of particles through the space-time's hori- zons, specifically the null geodesic method. The main goal of these computations is to obtain horizon temperatures, in which we succeed up to a constant multi- plicative factor. We discuss various pitfalls of the method and stake out a possible approach when applying it to the extreme horizons present in KN(a)dS. 1

The Bondi-Metzner-Sachs-van der Burg (BMS) group is the asymptotic symmetry group of radiating asymptotically flat spacetimes. It has recently received renewed interest in the context of the flat holography and the infrared structure of gravity. In this thesis, we investigate the consequences of considering extensions of the BMS group in four dimensions with superrotations. In particular, we apply the covariant phase space methods on a class of first order gauge theories that includes the Cartan formulation of general relativity and specify this analysis to gravity in asymptotically flat spacetime. Furthermore, we renormalize the symplectic structure at null infinity to obtain the generalized BMS charge algebra associated with smooth superrotations. We then study the vacuum structure of the gravitational field, which allows us to relate the so-called superboost transformations to the velocity kick/refraction memory effect. Afterward, we propose a new set of boundary conditions in asymptotically locally (A)dS spacetime that leads to a version of the BMS group in the presence of a non-vanishing cosmological constant, called the Λ-BMS asymptotic symmetry group. Using the holographic renormalization procedure and a diffeomorphism between Bondi and Fefferman-Graham gauges, we construct the phase space of Λ-BMS and show that it reduces to the one of the generalized BMS group in the flat limit. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The thesis treats aspects of string/M-theory in anti-de Sitter spacetimes and their supersymmetric completions. By applying the AdS/CFT correspondence, as well as models of spin chains and singletons, we try to attain a better understanding of the underlying symmetries and the unbroken phases of string/M-theory. Tensionless string/M-theory in anti-de Sitter spacetime is argued to imply a higher spin gauge symmetry enhancement and to be described by gauged sigma models of multi-singletons as well as by closed singleton strings. Vasiliev's weakly projected equations of symmetric massless higher spin gauge fields in the vector oscillator formulation is shown to follow from a deformation of the singleton model. Various four dimensional minimal as well as non-minimal supersymmetric higher spin gauge theories in the spinor formulation are examined. The minimal higher spin gauge theory based on the symmetry algebra hs(1|4) is elaborated on in an N=1 superspace, illustrating the remarkable fact that the choice of base manifold is not fixed in unfolded dynamics. The importance of the representations saturating the unitarity bounds in anti-de Sitter spacetime is stressed throughout the thesis, with particular emphasis on the singleton and the massless representations. Singletons, and hence massless states, are shown to appear as bound states on the string or p-brane and are localized at cusps. Furthermore, we examine semiclassical string solutions in Type IIB String Theory in AdS(5) x S(5) and their boundary duals in N=4 Super Yang-Mills Theory in d=4 which are constituted out of thermodynamic composite operators. By using integrable spin chain techniques and Bäcklund transformations in the field theory and in the string theory, respectively, the one-loop anomalous dimensions as well as the tower of conserved charges of the composite operators are shown to be in agreement with the energies and the tower of conserved charges associated with the dual string states.

The idea of holography [1, 2] finds a concrete realization in form of the AdS/CFT correspondence [3, 4]. This duality relates a field theory with conformal symmetries to quantum gravity living in one higher dimension. In this thesis we study aspects of black hole quasinormal modes, higher spin theories and entanglement entropy in the context of this duality. In almost all cases we have been able to subject the duality to some precision tests. Quasinormal modes encode the spectrum of black holes and the time-scale of pertur- bations therein [5]. From the dual CFT viewpoint they are the poles of retarded Green's function (or peaks in the spectral function) [6]. Quasinormal modes were previously studied for scalar, gauge field and fermion fluctuations [7]. We solve for these quasinormal modes of higher spin (s _ 2) fields in the background of the BTZ black hole [8, 9]. We obtain an exact solution for a field of arbitrary spin s (integer or half-integer) in the BTZ background. This implies that the BTZ is perhaps the only known black hole background where such an analysis can be done analytically for all bosonic and fermionic fields. The quasinormal modes are shown to match precisely with the poles of the corresponding Green's function in the CFT living on the boundary. Furthermore, we show that one-loop determinants of higher spin fields can also be written as a product form [10] in terms of these quasinormal modes and this agrees with the same obtained by integrating the heat-kernel [11]. We then turn our attention to dualities relating higher-spin gravity to CFTs with W algebra symmetries. Since higher spin gravity does go beyond diffeomorphism invariance, one needs re_ned notions of the usual concepts in differential geometry. For example, in general relativity black holes are defined by the presence of the horizon. However, higher spin gravity has an enlarged group of symmetries of which the diffeomorphisms form a subgroup. The appropriate way of thinking of solutions in higher spin gravity is via characterizations which are gauge invariant [12, 13]. We study classical solutions embedded in N = 2 higher spin supergravity. We obtain a general gauge-invariant condition { in terms of the odd roots of the superalgebra and the eigenvalues of the holonomy matrix of the background { for the existence of a Killing spinor such that these solutions are supersymmetric [14]. We also study black holes in higher spin supergravity and show that the partition function of these black holes match exactly with that obtained from a CFT with the same asymptotic symmetry algebra [15]. This involved studying the asymptotic symmetries of the black hole and thereby developing the holographic dictionary for the bulk charges and chemical potentials with the corresponding quantities of the CFT. We finally investigate entanglement entropy in the AdS3/CFT2 context. Entanglement entropy is an useful non-local probe in QFT and many-body physics [16]. We analytically evaluate the entanglement entropy of the free boson CFT on a circle at finite temperature (i.e. on a torus) [17]. This is one of the simplest and well-studied CFTs. The entanglement entropy is calculated via the replica trick using correlation functions of bosonic twist operators on the torus [18]. We have then set up a systematic high temperature expansion of the Renyi entropies and determined their finite size corrections. These _nite size corrections both for the free boson CFT and the free fermion CFT were then compared with the one-loop corrections obtained from bulk three dimensional handlebody spacetimes which have higher genus Riemann surfaces (replica geometry) as its boundary [19]. One-loop corrections in these geometries are entirely determined by the spectrum of the excitations present in the bulk. It is shown that the leading _nite size corrections obtained by evaluating the one-loop determinants on these handlebody geometries exactly match with those from the free fermion/boson CFTs. This provides a test for holographic methods to calculate one-loop corrections to entanglement entropy. We also study conformal field theories in 1+1 dimensions with W-algebra symmetries at _nite temperature and deformed by a chemical potential (_) for a higher spin current. Using OPEs and uniformization techniques, we show that the order _2 correction to the Renyi and entanglement entropies (EE) of a single interval in the deformed theory is universal [20]. This universal feature is also supported by explicit computations for the free fermion and free boson CFTs { for which the EE was calculated by using the replica trick in conformal perturbation theory by evaluating correlators of twist fields with higher spin operators [21]. Furthermore, this serves as a verification of the holographic EE proposal constructed from Wilson lines in higher spin gravity [22, 23]. We also examine relative entropy [24] in the context of higher-spin holography [25]. Relative entropy is a measure of distinguishability between two quantum states. We confirm the expected short-distance behaviour of relative entropy from holography. This is done by showing that the difference in the modular Hamiltonian between a high-temperature state and the vacuum matches with the difference in the entanglement entropy in the short-subsystem regime.