AdS3 vacua of topologically massive gravity (TMG) have been shown to be perturbatively unstable for all values of the coupling constant except the chiral point μl=1. We study the possibility that the warped vacua of TMG, which exist for all values of μ, are stable under linearized perturbations. In this paper, we show that spacelike warped AdS3 vacua with Compere-Detournay boundary conditions are indeed stable in the range μl > 3. This is precisely the range in which black hole solutions arise as discrete identifications of the warped AdS3 vacuum. The situation somewhat resembles chiral gravity: although negative energy modes do exist, they are all excluded by the boundary conditions, and the perturbative spectrum solely consists of boundary (pure large gauge) gravitons.
At the leading order, M-theory admits minimal supersymmetric compactifications if the internal manifold has exceptional holonomy. Once we take into account higher order quantum correction terms in the low energy effective action, the supergravity vacua have to be deformed away from the exceptional holonomy if we want to preserve the supersymmetry of the solution. In this paper we discuss the Spin(7) holonomy case. We derive a perturbative set of solutions which emerges from a warped compactification with non-vanishing flux for the M-theory field strength and we identify the supersymmetric vacu…
Continuing the programme of constructing the backreacted solution corresponding to smeared anti-D3 branes in the warped deformed conifold, we solve analytically the equations governing the space of first-order deformations around this solution. We express the results in terms of at most three nested integrals. These are the simplest expressions for the space of $SU(2) \times SU(2) \times \ZZ_2$-invariant deformations, in which the putative solution for smeared anti-D3 branes must live. We also explain why one cannot claim to identify this solution without fully relating the coefficients of the…
We present a simple class of warped-product vacuum (Ricci-flat) solutions to ten and eleven-dimensional supergravity, where the internal space is flat and the warp factor supports de Sitter (dS) and anti-de Sitter (AdS) vacua in addition to trivial Minkowski vacua. We outline the construction of consistent Kaluza-Klein (KK) reductions and show that, although our vacuum solutions are non-supersymmetric, these are closely related to the bosonic part of well-known maximally supersymmetric reductions on spheres. We comment on the stability of our solutions, noting that (A)dS$_3$ vacua pass routine…
Three-dimensional warped anti-de Sitter space in topologically massive gravity with a negative cosmological constant has been proposed to be holographically dual to a two-dimensional conformal field theory. We extend this proposal to both positive and vanishing values of the cosmological constant where stretched warped anti-de Sitter space is found to be a solution. For positive cosmological constant, another class of warped solutions is obtained by a spacelike (timelike) line fibration over Lorentzian (Euclidean) two-dimensional de Sitter space. These solutions exhibit a cosmological horizon …
We discuss the structure of the vacua in $O(2)$ topologically massive gauge theory on a torus. Since $O(2)$ has two connected components, there are four classical vacua. The different vacua impose different boundary conditions on the gauge potentials. We also discuss the non-perturbative transitions between the vacua induced by vortices of the theory.
We study the existence of metastable vacua in cascades based on fractional brane configurations at non-isolated singularities preserving N = 1 supersymmetry. We find that in a large class of models the extra moduli typically generated along such cascades may be stabilized by utilizing special monopole points found recently. We illustrate this in detail for cascades based on the SPP singularity. The supergravity interpretation of these constructions in terms of warped throats with supersymmetry breaking localized near their tips as well as applications to string compactification is discussed. O…
We consider de Sitter vacua realised in concrete type IIB Calabi-Yau compactifications with an anti D3-brane at the tip of a warped throat of Klebanov-Strassler type. The Kähler moduli are stabilised together with the complex structure modulus of the warped throat. The volume is exponentially large as in the large volume scenario (LVS). We analyse the conditions on the parameters of the EFT such that they are in the region of validity of our approximations, there are no runaway problems and the vacua satisfy all consistency constraints, such as tadpole cancellation. We illustrate our results w…
The absorption cross section for the the warped AdS$_3$ black hole background shows that it is larger than the area even if the s-wave limit is considered. It raises some question whether the deviation from the areal cross section is due to the warped configuration of the geometry or the rotating coordinate system, where these two effects are mixed up in the warped AdS$_3$ black hole. So, we study the low-frequency scattering dynamics of propagating scalar fields under the warped AdS$_3$ background at the critical point which reduces to the BTZ black hole in the rotating frame without the warp…
We consider the effect of warping on the distribution of type IIB flux vacua constructed with Calabi-Yau orientifolds. We derive an analytical form of the distribution that incorporates warping and find close agreement with the results of a Monte Carlo enumeration of vacua. Compared with calculations that neglect warping, we find that for any finite volume compactification, the density of vacua is highly diluted in close proximity to the conifold point, with a steep drop-off within a critical distance.
We determine the most general form of off-shell N=(1,1) supergravity field configurations in three dimensions by requiring that at least one off-shell Killing spinor exists. We then impose the field equations of the topologically massive off-shell supergravity and find a class of solutions whose properties crucially depend on the norm of the auxiliary vector field. These are spacelike-squashed and timelike-stretched AdS_3 for the spacelike and timelike norms, respectively. At the transition point where the norm vanishes, the solution is null warped AdS_3. This occurs when the coefficient of th…
We propose a set of consistent boundary conditions containing the spacelike warped black holes solutions of Topologically Massive Gravity. We prove that the corresponding asymptotic charges whose algebra consists in a Virasoro algebra and a current algebra are finite, integrable and conserved. A similar analysis is performed for the timelike warped AdS_3 spaces which contain a family of regular solitons. The energy of the boundary Virasoro excitations is positive while the current algebra leads to negative (for the spacelike warped case) and positive (for the timelike warped case) energy bound…
We analyze vacuum decay in brane world setups, where a free scalar field in five dimensions has a localized potential admitting metastable vacua. We study in particular the bounce solution and its properties in flat and warped spaces. In the latter case, placing into a deeply warped region the term in the potential that lifts the vacuum degeneracy, can increase indefinitely the lifetime of the false vacuum. We discuss the application to metastable vacua in supersymmetric brane-world constructions.
We consider AdS3 and warped AdS3 vacua in new massive gravity and study the highest weight modes and general propagating modes as a set of solutions for the linearized equations of motion. We observed that depending on the choice of gauge there are two types of solutions. We show that for warped AdS3 vacuum, the massless modes which appear only in the harmonic gauge have zero energy density and do not get higher curvature corrections. By computing the energy density it can be shown that all massive modes have negative energy density. Our computations prove that the massive modes in warped AdS3…
We demonstrate that the warped AdS3 black hole solutions of Topologically Massive Gravity are classically stable against massive scalar field perturbations by analysing the quasinormal and bound state modes of the scalar field. In particular, it is found that although classical superradiance is present it does not give rise to superradiant instabilities. The stability is shown to persist even when the black hole is enclosed by a stationary mirror with Dirichlet boundary conditions. This is a surprising result in view of the similarity between the causal structure of the warped AdS3 black hole …
We consider Topologically Massive Gravity (TMG), which is three dimensional general relativity with a cosmological constant and a gravitational Chern-Simons term. When the cosmological constant is negative the theory has two potential vacuum solutions: Anti-de Sitter space and Warped Anti-de Sitter space. The theory also contains a massive graviton state which renders these solutions unstable for certain values of the parameters and boundary conditions. We study the decay of these solutions due to the condensation of the massive graviton mode using Ricci-Cotton flow, which is the appropriate g…
We summarize the results and the ideas in 1707.06152, 1707.06154, 1807.07768 where new warped $\mathrm{AdS}_3$ backgrounds are derived in massive IIA string theory by uplifting exact solutions in $\mathcal N=1$, $d=7$ and $\mathcal N=(1,1)$, $d=6$ gauged supergravities. These solutions are respectively asymptotically $\mathrm{AdS}_7$ and $\mathrm{AdS}_6$ and they are related to the D2-D4-NS5-D6-D8 brane intersection. We provide a particular supergravity solution in 10d describing this bound state and we discuss the relations between its near-horizon geometry and the uplifts from 6d and 7d. The…
Asymptotically warped AdS spacetimes in topologically massive gravity with negative cosmological constant are considered in the case of spacelike stretched warping, where black holes have been shown to exist. We provide a set of asymptotic conditions that accommodate solutions in which the local degree of freedom (the "massive graviton") is switched on. An exact solution with this property is explicitly exhibited and possesses a slower fall-off than the warped AdS black hole. The boundary conditions are invariant under the semidirect product of the Virasoro algebra with a u(1) current algebra.…
The moduli space of N=1 type II warped compactions to flat space with generic internal fluxes is studied. Using the underlying integrable generalized complex structure that characterizes these vacua, the different deformations are classified by H-twisted generalized cohomologies and identified with chiral and linear multiplets of the effective four-dimensional theory. The Kaehler potential for chiral fields corresponding to classically flat moduli is discussed. As an application of the general results, type IIB warped Calabi-Yau compactifications and other SU(3)-structure subcases are consider…
We show how to construct supersymmetric warped AdS$_7$ vacua of massive IIA and AdS$_6$ vacua of IIB supergravity, using "half-maximal structures" of exceptional field theory. We use this formalism to obtain the minimal consistent truncations around these AdS vacua.
We consider backgrounds of (massive) IIA supergravity of the form of a warped product $M_{1,3}\times_ω X_6$, where $X_6$ is a six-dimensional compact manifold and $M_{1,3}$ is $AdS_4$ or a four-dimensional Minkowski space. We analyse conditions for $\mathcal{N}=1$ and $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetry on manifolds of SU(2) structure. We prove the absence of solutions in certain cases.
We generalize the swampland criterion forbidding stable non-supersymmetric AdS vacua and propose a new swampland conjecture forbidding stable non-supersymmetric "locally AdS" warped throats. The conjecture is motivated by the properties of systems of fractional D3-branes at singularities, and can be used to rule out large classes of warped throats with supersymmetry breaking ingredients, and their possible application to de Sitter uplift. In particular, this allows to reinterpret the runaway instabilities of the gravity dual of fractional branes in the dP$_1$ theory, and to rule out warped thr…
We study the entropy of extremal warped black hole obtained from the topologically massive gravity with a negative cosmological constant of $Λ=-1/l^2$. We compare the entropy $S_e=πα/3G$ from the Wald formalism with $S_w=πl u /3G$ from the entropy function approach. These are the same if $α=l u$. Also we obtain the same Cardy formula when $J_e= l^3 q$ with $J_e$ the angular momentum and $q$ the conserved quantity.
We consider asymptotically Warped AdS$_3$ black holes in Topologically Massive Gravity. We study their thermodynamic stability and show the existence of a Hawking-Page phase transition between the black hole and thermal background phases. At zero angular potential, the latter is shown to occur at the self-dual point of the dual Warped Conformal Field Theory partition function, in analogy with the phase transition for BTZ black holes in AdS$_3$/CFT$_2$. We also discuss how the central and vacuum charges can be obtained from inner horizon mechanics in the presence of a gravitational anomaly.
We present a new Type IIB supergravity background of the warped form AdS$_4\times \mathcal{M}_6$ with dilaton, $B$-field and all Ramond-Ramond fluxes turned on. We obtain the solution by applying non-Abelian T-duality to a certain representative of a class of AdS$_4$ backgrounds in massive IIA supergravity. By explicitly constructing the Killing spinor of the seed solution and using an argument involving Kosmann spinorial Lie derivative we demonstrate that the background is supersymmetric.
We study the thermodynamic stability of warped black holes in three-dimensional topologically massive gravity. The spacelike stretched black hole is parametrized by its mass and angular momentum. We determine the local and global stability properties in the canonical and grand canonical ensembles. The presence of a Hawking-Page type transition is established, and the critical temperature is determined. The thermodynamic metric of Ruppeiner is computed, and the curvature is shown to diverge in the extremal limit. The consequences of these results for the classical stability properties of warped…
Besides black holes, the phase space of three-dimensional massive gravity about Warped-Anti de Sitter (WAdS) space contains solutions that decay exponentially in time. They describe evanescent graviton configurations that, while governed by a wave equation with non-vanishing effective mass, do not carry net gravitational energy. Explicit examples of such solutions have been found in the case of Topologically Massive Gravity; here, we generalize them to a much more general ghost-free massive deformation, with the difference being that the decay rate gets corrected due to the presence of higher-…
We outline the construction of metastable de Sitter vacua of type IIB string theory. Our starting point is highly warped IIB compactifications with nontrivial NS and RR three-form fluxes. By incorporating known corrections to the superpotential from Euclidean D-brane instantons or gaugino condensation, one can make models with all moduli fixed, yielding a supersymmetric AdS vacuum. Inclusion of a small number of anti-D3 branes in the resulting warped geometry allows one to uplift the AdS minimum and make it a metastable de Sitter ground state. The lifetime of our metastable de Sitter vacua is …
We investigate in detail solutions of supergravity that involve warped products of flat geometries of the type M(p+1) x R x T(D-p-2) depending on a single coordinate. In the absence of fluxes, the solutions include flat space and Kasner-like vacua that break all supersymmetries. In the presence of a symmetric flux, there are three families of solutions that are characterized by a pair of boundaries and have a singularity at one of them, the origin. The first family comprises supersymmetric vacua, which capture a universal limiting behavior at the origin. The first and second families also cont…
We propose a deformation principle of gauge theories in three dimensions that can describe topologically stable self-dual gauge fields, i.e., vacua configurations that in spite of their masses do not deform the background geometry and are locally undetected by charged particles. We interpret these systems as describing boundary degrees of freedom of a self-dual Yang-Mills field in $2+2$ dimensions with mixed boundary conditions. Some of these fields correspond to Abrikosov-like vortices with an exponential damping in the direction penetrating into the bulk. We also propose generalizations of t…
We construct the first D = 4 Minkowski string theory vacua of flux compactification which are (i) chiral, (ii) free of NSNS and RR tadpoles, and (iii) N = 1 or N = 0 supersymmetric. In the latter case SUSY is softly broken by the fluxes, with soft terms being generated in the gauge and chiral sectors of the theory. In addition, the low energy spectrum of the theory is MSSM-like, the dilaton/complex structure moduli are stabilized and the supergravity background involves a warped metric.
We derive conditions for the existence of four-dimensional \N=1 supersymmetric flux vacua of massive type IIA string theory with general supergravity fluxes turned on. For an SU(3) singlet Killing spinor, we show that such flux vacua exist only when the internal geometry is nearly-Kähler. The geometry is not warped, all the allowed fluxes are proportional to the mass parameter and the dilaton is fixed by a ratio of (quantized) fluxes. The four-dimensional cosmological constant, while negative, becomes small in the vacuum with the weak string coupling.
We classify all stationary axi-symmetric solutions of topologically massive gravity into Einstein, Schrödinger, warped and generic solutions. We construct explicitly all local solutions in the first three sectors and present an algorithm for the numerical construction of all local solutions in the generic sector. The only input for this algorithm is the value of one constant of motion if the solution has an analytic centre, and three constants of motion otherwise. We present several examples, including soliton solutions that asymptote to warped AdS.
We define conserved gravitational charges in -cosmologically extended- topologically massive gravity, exhibit them in surface integral form about their de-Sitter or flat vacua and verify their correctness in terms of two basic types of solution.
We first make a Killing spinor analysis for a general three-dimensional off-shell $N=(2,0)$ supergravity and find conditions for a bosonic background to preserve some supersymmetry . We then consider a particular model, namely $N=(2,0)$ topologically massive supergravity and impose its field equations. By making a suitable ansatz on metric functions we find a large class of solutions that include spacelike, timelike and null warped $AdS_3$ among others. Isometric quotients of spacelike and timelike squashed $AdS_3$ solutions yield extremal black holes without closed causal curves.
It is shown that the warped black holes geometries discussed recently in 0807.3040 admit an algebra of asymptotic symmetries isomorphic to the semi-direct product of a Virasoro algebra and an algebra of currents. The realization of this asymptotic symmetry by canonical charges allows one to find the central charge of the Virasoro algebra. The right-moving central charge $c_R = \frac{(5\hatν^2+3)l}{G\hatν (\hatν^2+3)}$ is obtained when the Virasoro generators are normalized in order to have a positive zero mode spectrum for the warped black holes. The current algebra is also shown to be central…
In this paper, we investigate the warped dS/CFT correspondence of the self-dual warped dS$_3$ spacetime, which is a solution of three-dimensional topologically massive gravity (TMG) with a positive cosmological constant. We discuss its thermodynamics at two cosmological horizons. We propose that the self-dual warped dS$_3$ spacetime is holographically dual to a chiral conformal field theory. We analytically calculate the quasinormal modes of scalar, vector, tensor, and spinor perturbations under the self-dual warped dS$_3$ spacetime. It turns out that the frequencies of the quasinormal modes c…
We study supergravity backgrounds encoded through the gauge/string correspondence by the SU(N) \times SU(N) theory arising on N D3-branes on the conifold. As discussed in hep-th/9905104, the dynamics of this theory describes warped versions of both the singular and the resolved conifolds through different (symmetry breaking) vacua. We construct these supergravity solutions explicitly and match them with the gauge theory with different sets of vacuum expectation values of the bi-fundamental fields A_1, A_2, B_1, B_2. For the resolved conifold, we find a non-singular SU(2)\times U(1)\times U(1) …
We study a recently proposed model, where a codimension one brane is wrapped around the axis of symmetry of an internal two dimensional space compactified by a flux. This construction is free from the problems which plague delta-like, codimension two branes, where only tension can be present. In contrast, arbitrary fields can be localized on this extended brane, and their gravitational interaction is standard 4d gravity at large distance. In the first part of this note, we study the de Sitter (dS) vacua of the model. The landscape of these vacua is characterized by discrete points labeled by t…
Three dimensional topologically massive gravity (TMG) with a negative cosmological constant -\ell^{-2} and positive Newton constant G admits an AdS_3 vacuum solution for any value of the graviton mass μ. These are all known to be perturbatively unstable except at the recently explored chiral point μ\ell=1. However we show herein that for every value of μ\ell< 3 there are two other (potentially stable) vacuum solutions given by SL(2,R)x U(1)-invariant warped AdS_3 geometries, with a timelike or spacelike U(1) isometry. Critical behavior occurs at μ\ell=3, where the warping transitions from a st…
Particle physics has evolved in the past decade through evaluating the consequences of experimental measurements as well as exploiting theoretical tools that permit exploration of new model building and cosmological possibilities. Particularly due to insights from the AdS/CFT correspondence, higher-dimensional warped compactifications, in particular, have played a big role in recent developments by allowing a study of regimes of parameters that would otherwise be intractable. Similarly, theoretical developments in quantum gravity benefit from the bigger range of possibilities that can be explo…
We obtain all homogeneous solutions of new massive gravity models on S^3 and AdS_3 by extending previously known results for the cosmological topologically massive theory of gravity in three dimensions. In all cases, apart from the maximally symmetric vacua, there are axially symmetric (i.e., bi-axially squashed) as well as totally anisotropic (i.e., tri-axially squashed) metrics of special algebraic type. Transitions among the vacua are modeled by instanton solutions of 3+1 Horava-Lifshitz gravity with anisotropic scaling parameter z=4.
We study field theories in two spacetime dimensions invariant under a chiral scaling symmetry that acts only on right-movers. The local symmetries include one copy of the Virasoro algebra and a U(1) current algebra. This differs from the 2d conformal group, but in some respects is equally powerful in constraining the theory. In particular, the symmetries on a torus lead to modular covariance of the partition function, which is used to derive a universal formula for the asymptotic density of states. For an application we turn to the holographic description of black holes in quantum gravity, mot…
We study the classical solutions of three dimensional topologically massive gravity (TMG) and its higher spin generalization, in the first order formulation. The action of higher spin TMG has been proposed in arXiv:1110.5113 to be of a Chern-Simons-like form. The equations of motion are more complicated than the ones in pure higher spin AdS$_3$ gravity, but are still tractable. As all the solutions in higher spin gravity are automatically the solutions of higher spin TMG, we focus on other solutions. We manage to find the AdS pp-wave solutions with higher spin hair, and find that the nonvanish…
We investigate the non-perturbative stability of supersymmetric compactifications with respect to decay via a bubble of nothing. We show examples where this kind of instability is not prohibited by the spin structure, i.e., periodicity of fermions about the extra dimension. However, such "topologically unobstructed" cases do exhibit an extra-dimensional analog of the well-known Coleman-De Luccia suppression mechanism, which prohibits the decay of supersymmetric vacua. We demonstrate this explicitly in a four dimensional Abelian-Higgs toy model coupled to supergravity. The compactification of t…
Cosmological solutions with a homogeneous Yang-Mills field which oscillates and passes between topologically distinct vacua are discussed. These solutions are used to model the collapsing Bartnik-McKinnon gravitational sphaleron and the associated anomalous production of fermions. The Dirac equation is analyzed in these backgrounds. It is shown explicitly that a fermion energy level crosses from the negative to positive energy spectrum as the gauge field evolves between the topologically distinct vacua. The cosmological solutions are also generalized to include an axion field.
We equip three-dimensional spin-3 gravity in the principal embedding with a new set of boundary conditions that we call "asymptotically null warped AdS". We find a chiral copy of the Polyakov-Bershadsky algebra as asymptotic symmetry algebra, reminiscent of the situation in topologically massive gravity with strict null warped AdS boundary conditions. We prove the invertibility of the map between zuvielbein and metric variables and construct a global gauge transformation to half of AdS spin-3 gravity in the diagonal embedding. This explains why the theory is chiral and why the Polyakov-Bershad…
We study the normal modes of a scalar field in the background of a warped AdS_3 black hole which arises in topologically massive gravity. We discuss the normal mode spectrum using the brick wall boundary condition. In addition, we investigate the possibility of a more general boundary condition for the scalar field.
We study the topologically massive gravity with a negative cosmological constant on AdS$_2$ spacetimes by making use of dimensional reduction. For a constant dilaton, this two-dimensional model admits three AdS$_2$ vacuum solutions, which are related to AdS$_3$ and warped AdS$_3$ with an identification upon uplifting three dimensions. We carry out the perturbation analysis around these backgrounds to find what is a physically propagating field. It turns out that a mode of $δF = (h-f/e)$ is merely a redundant field of dilaton $φ$ in the absence of Chern-Simons terms, while it becomes a massive …
We review some aspects of the dramatic consequences of supersymmetry breaking on string vacua. In particular, we focus on the issue of vacuum stability in ten-dimensional string models with broken, or without, supersymmetry, whose perturbative spectra are free of tachyons. After formulating the models at stake, we introduce their unified low-energy effective description and present a number of vacuum solutions to the classical equations of motion. In addition, we present a generalization of previous no-go results for de Sitter vacua in warped flux compactifications. Then we analyze the classic…
We investigate properties of the inner horizons of certain black holes in higher-derivative three-dimensional gravity theories. We focus on BTZ and Spacelike Warped Anti-de Sitter black holes, as well as on asymptotically Warped de-Sitter solutions exhibiting both a cosmological and a black hole horizon. We verify that a First Law is satisfied at the Inner horizon, in agreement with the proposal of \cite{Castro:2012av}. We then show that, in Topologically Massive Gravity, the product of the areas of the inner and outer horizons fails to be independent on the mass, and trace this to the diffeom…
We construct N=1 and N=0 chiral four-dimensional vacua of flux compactification in Type IIB string theory. These vacua have the common features that they are free of tadpole instabilities (both NSNS and RR) even for models with N=0 supersymmetry. In addition, the dilaton/complex structure moduli are stabilised and the supergravity background metric is warped. We present an example in which the low energy spectrum contains the MSSM spectrum with three generations of chiral matter. In the N=0 models, the background fluxes which stabilise the moduli also induce soft supersymmetry breaking terms i…
We give a direct computation of the mass of black holes in Warped Anti-de Sitter space (WAdS) in terms of the Brown-York stress-tensor at the boundary. This permits to explore to what extent the holographic renormalization techniques can be applied to such type of deformation of AdS. We show that, despite some components of the boundary stress-tensor diverge and resist to be regularized by the introduction of local counterterms, the precise combination that gives the quasilocal energy density yields a finite integral. The result turns out to be in agreement with previous computations of the bl…
In a recent paper [arXiv:1806.06254], we explored the space of solutions of the exotic massive 3D gravity theory proposed in [arXiv:1806.04179]. We showed that the theory admits a rich space of vacua, including asymptotically Anti de-Sitter (AdS) geometries obeying different types of boundary conditions. The examples include black holes dressed with low decaying gravitons. Based on what happens in other theories of massive gravity, we conjectured that such geometries appear on a curve of the parameter space (chiral curve) where the exotic massive gravity on AdS with sufficiently strong boundar…
We study warped compactifications of string/M theory with the help of effective potentials, continuing previous work of the last two authors and Michael R. Douglas presented in arXiv:1206.1885. The dynamics of the conformal factor of the internal metric, which is responsible for instabilities in these constructions, is explored, and such instabilities are investigated in the context of de Sitter vacua. We prove existence results for the equations of motion in the case of a slowly varying warp factor, and the stability of such solutions is also addressed. These solutions are a family of meta-st…
We reconsider warped black hole solutions in topologically massive gravity and find novel boundary conditions that allow for soft hairy excitations on the horizon. To compute the associated symmetry algebra we develop a general framework to compute asymptotic symmetries in any Chern-Simons-like theory of gravity. We use this to show that the near horizon symmetry algebra consists of two u(1) current algebras and recover the surprisingly simple entropy formula $S=2π(J_0^+ + J_0^-)$, where $J_0^\pm$ are zero mode charges of the current algebras. This provides the first example of a locally non-m…
We consider the area and entropy spectra of black holes in topologically massive gravity with gravitational Chern-Simons term. The examples we consider are the BTZ black hole and the warped AdS black hole. For the non-rotating BTZ black hole, the area and entropy spectra are equally spaced and independent of the coupling constant $\v$ of the Chern-Simons term. For the rotating BTZ black hole case, the spectra of the inner and outer horizon areas are not equally spaced in general and dependent of the coupling constant $\v$. However the entropy spectrum is equally spaced and independent of the c…
Using the superconformal framework, we construct a new off-shell model for $\cal N=4$ topologically massive supergravity which is minimal in the sense that it makes use of a single compensating vector multiplet and involves no free parameter. As such, it provides a counterexample to the common lore that two compensating multiplets are required within the conformal approach to supergravity with eight supercharges in diverse dimensions. This theory is an off-shell $\cal N=4$ supersymmetric extension of chiral gravity. All of its solutions correspond to non-conformally flat superspaces. Its maxim…
