BTZ black hole 2026-09-28
The BTZ black hole is a quotient of three-dimensional Anti-de Sitter spacetime. In lapse-and-shift coordinates its outer and inner horizon radii are and , and its outer-horizon surface gravity is
Use the convention and . Each independent two-form has only one coordinate-plane wedge, so the Ricci tensor is diagonal. Contracting the six coefficients gives
But , so
In coordinate-independent form, . Thus the vacuum Einstein field equations hold with
The curvature radius is one in the metric's normalization. The parameter changes the individual curvature 2-forms but cancels from their Ricci contraction. For this is Anti-de Sitter spacetime; for nonzero it is the planar Einstein metric with cubic radial function, with a nontrivial Weyl tensor rather than universally constant sectional curvature. The result is local on regular coordinate patches; a zero of invalidates this particular static coframe, not the tensor equation in a suitable regular extension.
In the Polonyi model, the Kähler metric is . The relevant Kähler covariant derivative of a superpotential is
The supergravity auxiliary field is , up to an irrelevant common phase convention. Thus a constant vacuum preserves supersymmetry exactly when this auxiliary field vanishes. For , the superpotential and scalar potential vanish identically, and every constant scalar value is a supersymmetric vacuum.
For , put . Its supersymmetry condition becomes
Since , it requires and . Hence the Polonyi supersymmetry branches are
At these points , so the supergravity F-term potential is negative, : these are supersymmetric Anti-de Sitter spacetime vacua, not zero-energy ones. The condition also makes them stationary, as follows by differentiating the supergravity F-term potential.
For and , the auxiliary field cannot vanish anywhere, so any vacuum has supersymmetry breaking. For , a stationary vacuum at any other scalar value still breaks supersymmetry; the parameter condition alone does not determine which vacuum is selected. In particular, a nontrivial zero-energy vacuum cannot preserve supersymmetry: and would also imply , whereas gives and .
For an affine parameter , the geodesic Lagrangian is
Varying gives the geodesic equations
The rotational Killing vector fields of the spherical symmetry conserve the angular-momentum vector. Its direction is fixed, so every nonradial orbit lies in the plane through the symmetry centre orthogonal to that vector. A spatial rotation can make this the equatorial plane. Equivalently, the initial conditions and solve the equation uniquely. This is the planarity of geodesics in spherical symmetry; a radial geodesic has zero angular momentum and may be assigned any plane.
On , the cyclic coordinates and produce geodesic conserved quantities from Killing vectors,
For a timelike geodesic parametrized by proper time, the proper-time normalization is . Substitution of and gives the first-order radial equation
This is the timelike geodesic effective potential for static Anti-de Sitter spacetime with curvature radius one.
A geodesic passing through must have . If it moves away from the origin, , and
Taking proper time at departure gives
It turns around at and first returns to the origin at
This energy-independent refocusing is the characteristic radial timelike geodesic in anti-de Sitter spacetime result; for curvature radius , the answer is .
The state–operator correspondence maps to the lowest one-particle state on . On a sphere of radius , cylinder energy equals scaling dimension divided by . The primary has .
A translation generator raises the dimension by one and transforms as a vector of . States with no angular momentum arise from scalar descendant pairs , so the allowed descendants are
Their dimensions are , and hence the one-quantum, zero-angular-momentum energies are
These are the normal-mode energies of a massless scalar in global Anti-de Sitter spacetime.