Black brane evaporation through D-brane bubble nucleation

Abstract: We study the process of black brane evaporation through the emission of D-branes. Gravitational solutions describing black branes in asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes, which are holographically dual to field theory states at finite temperature and density, have previously been found to exhibit an instability due to brane nucleation. Working in the setting of D3-branes on the conifold, we construct static Euclidean solutions describing this nucleation to leading order - D3-branes bubbling off the horizon. Furthermore, we analyze the late-time dynamics of such a D3-brane bubble as it expands and find a steady-state solution including the wall profile and its speed.