We clarify the relation between gravitational entropy and the area of horizons. We first show that the entropy of an extreme Reissner-Nordström black hole is zero, despite the fact that its horizon has nonzero area. Next, we consider the pair creation of extremal and nonextremal black holes. It is shown that the action which governs the rate of this pair creation is directly related to the area of the acceleration horizon and (in the nonextremal case) the area of the black hole event horizon. This provides a simple explanation of the result that the rate of pair creation of non-extreme black holes is enhanced by precisely the black hole entropy. Finally, we discuss black hole annihilation, and argue that Planck scale remnants are not sufficient to preserve unitarity in quantum gravity.

We embed a holographic description of a quantum field theory with Galilean conformal invariance in string theory. The key observation is that such field theories may be realized as conventional superconformal field theories with a known string theory embedding, twisted by the R-symmetry in a light-like direction. Using the Null Melvin Twist, we construct the appropriate dual geometry and its non-extremal generalization. From the nonzero temperature solution we determine the equation of state. We also discuss the hydrodynamic regime of these non-relativistic plasmas and show that the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio takes the universal value η/s = 1/4π typical of strongly interacting field theories with gravity duals. There are twists of the R-symmetry that preserve as many as 8 supercharges [23]. We use a simple twist which does not preserve any supersymmetry because of the resulting form of the H (3) flux. 4 We would like to thank Allan Adams for mentioning this DLCQ interpretation in informal discussion.

Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. We construct smooth nonsupersymmetric soliton solutions with D1-brane, D5-brane, and momentum charges in type IIB supergravity compactified on T 4 S 1 , with the charges along the compact directions. This generalizes previous studies of smooth supersymmetric solutions. The solutions are obtained by considering a known family of U1 U1 invariant metrics, and studying the conditions imposed by requiring smoothness. We discuss the relation of our solutions to states in the CFT describing the D1-D5 system and describe various interesting features of the geometry.

. (2001) Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO• the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Conical defects, or point particles, in AdS 3 are one of the simplest nontrivial gravitating systems, and are particularly interesting because black holes can form from their collision. We embed the BPS conical defects of three dimensions into the Nϭ4b supergravity in six dimensions, which arises from the IIB string theory compactified on K3. The required Kaluza-Klein reduction of the six dimensional theory on a sphere is analyzed in detail, including the relation to the Chern-Simons supergravities in three dimensions. We show that the six dimensional spaces obtained by embedding the 3D conical defects arise in the near-horizon limit of rotating black strings. Various properties of these solutions are analyzed and we propose a representation of our defects in the CFT dual to asymptotically AdS 3 ϫS 3 spaces. Our work is intended as a first step towards analyzing colliding defects that form black holes.

In anti-de Sitter (AdS) space, classical supergravity solutions are represented "holographically" by conformal field theory (CFT) states in which operators have expectation values. These 1-point functions are directly related to the asymptotic behaviour of bulk fields. In some cases, distinct supergravity solutions have identical asymptotic behaviour; so dual expectation values are insufficient to distinguish them. We argue that non-local objects in the gauge theory can resolve the ambiguity, and explicitly show that collections of point particles in AdS 3 can be detected by studying kinks in dual CFT Green functions. Three dimensional black holes can be formed by collision of such particles. We show how black hole formation can be detected in the holographic dual, and calculate CFT quantities that are sensitive to the distribution of matter inside the event horizon.