Black Holes, Gravity Waves and String Theory

Citation

Schwarz, Patricia Margaret (1998) Black Holes, Gravity Waves and String Theory. Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/bxdb-px49. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:07232025-152000994

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationships between black holes and gravity waves in string theory. First we review charged black hole solutions in the low-energy limit of string theory, some of which have been shown to be exact conformally invariant backgrounds for string propagation. Then we review the properties of gravitational wave spacetimes known as PP waves, which are related to exact extreme charged black holes through chiral null models on the string worldsheet, and compare particle and string geodesic focusing in a constant plane wave background.

The colliding plane wave metric discovered by Ferrari and Ibanez to be locally isometric to the interior of a Schwarzschild black hole is extended to the case of general axion-dilaton black holes. Because the transformation maps either black hole horizon to the focal plane of the colliding waves, this entire class of colliding plane wave spacetimes only suffers from the formation of spacetime singularities when the inner horizon itself is singular, which occurs in the Schwarzschild and singular dilaton black hole limits. The supersymmetric limit, corresponding to the extreme axion-dilaton black hole, yields the Bertotti-Robinson metric with the axion and dilaton fields flowing to fixed constant values. The maximal analytic extension of this metric across the Cauchy horizon yields a spacetime in which two sandwich waves in a cylindrical universe collide to produce a semi-infinite chain of Reissner-Nordstromlike wormholes. The "stringy stretched horizon" as developed by Susskind is examined from the point of view of colliding plane waves.

Thesis Files