Stability and the negative mode for Schwarzschild in a finite cavity

Abstract

It has been proposed that translationally-invariant black branes are classically stable if and only if they are locally thermodynamically stable. Reall has outlined a general argument to demonstrate this, and studied in detail the case of charged black p-branes in type II supergravity. We consider the application of his argument in the simplest non-trivial case, an uncharged asymptotically flat brane enclosed in a finite cylindrical cavity. In this simple context, it is possible to give a more complete argument than in the cases considered earlier, and it is therefore a particularly attractive example of the general approach.