Black Hole Entropy in Two Dimensions

Black hole entropy is studied for an exactly solvable model of two-dimensional gravity\cite{rst1}, using recently developed Noether charge techniques\cite{wald1}. This latter approach is extended to accomodate the non-local form of the semiclassical effective action. In the two-dimensional model, the final black hole entropy can be expressed as a local quantity evaluated on the horizon. This entropy is shown to satisfy an increase theorem on either the global or apparent horizon of a two-dimensional black hole.Comment: 18 pages, latex McGill/94-22 (minor revisions; final version which will appear in Phys. Rev. D

Dielectric-Branes

We extend the usual world-volume action for a Dp-brane to the case of N coincident Dp-branes where the world-volume theory involves a U(N) gauge theory. The guiding principle in our construction is that the action should be consistent with the familiar rules of T-duality. The resulting action involves a variety of potential terms, i.e., nonderivative interactions, for the nonabelian scalar fields. This action also shows that Dp-branes naturally couple to RR potentials of all form degrees, including both larger and smaller than p+1. We consider the dynamics resulting from this action for Dp-branes moving in nontrivial background fields, and illustrate how the Dp-branes are ``polarized'' by external fields. In a simple example, we show that a system of D0-branes in an external RR four-form field expands into a noncommutative two-sphere, which is interpreted as the formation of a spherical D2-D0 bound state.Comment: 33 pages, Latex, 2 ref.'s added, few typo's fixe

Flow of low energy couplings in the Wilson renormalization group

A new form of the Wilson renormalization group equation is derived, in which the flow equations are, up to linear terms, proportional to a gradient flow. A set of co\"ordinates is found in which the flow of marginal, low-energy, couplings takes a gradient form, if relevant couplings are tuned to vanish.Comment: 9 pages, RevTeX. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Observations of young low-mass stars in dense cores

In this period the first maps were made during two flights of the Kuipper Airborne Observatory (KAO) in January 1986. One of these shows extended emission at 100 and 160 microns from the dense core B35 containing the IRAS point source 05417+0907. The 160 micron emission has approximately the same extent as the NH3 (1,1) line emission at 1.4 cm, indicating close correspondence between the warm dust and the dense gas. The 160 micron map shows a previously unknown secondary maximum about 90 arcsec north of the IRAS source

Instability of Ultra-Spinning Black Holes

It has long been known that, in higher-dimensional general relativity, there are black hole solutions with an arbitrarily large angular momentum for a fixed mass. We examine the geometry of the event horizon of such ultra-spinning black holes and argue that these solutions become unstable at large enough rotation. Hence we find that higher-dimensional general relativity imposes an effective `Kerr-bound' on spinning black holes through a dynamical decay mechanism. Our results also give indications of the existence of new stationary black holes with `rippled' horizons of spherical topology. We consider various scenarios for the possible decay of ultra-spinning black holes, and finally discuss the implications of our results for black holes in braneworld scenarios.Comment: 21 pages, typo's corrected, ref's adde