Supertube domain-walls and elimination of closed time-like curves in string theory

Abstract

We show that some novel physics of supertubes removes closed time-like curves from many supersymmetric spaces which naively suffer from this problem. The main claim is that supertubes naturally form domain-walls, so while analytical continuation of the metric would lead to closed time-like curves, across the domain-wall the metric is non-differentiable, and the closed time-like curves are eliminated. In the examples we study the metric inside the domain-wall is always of the Gödel type, while outside the shell it looks like a localized rotating object, often a rotating black hole. Thus this mechanism prevents the appearance of closed time-like curves behind the horizons of certain rotating black holes.