Dynamical Instability of Self-Gravitating Membranes

Understand

We show that a generic relativistic membrane with in-plane pressure and surface density having the same sign is unstable with respect to a series of warping mode instabilities with high wave numbers.

• We also examine the criteria of instability for commonly studied exotic compact objects with membranes, such as gravastars, AdS bubbles and thin-shell wormholes.
• For example, a gravastar which satisfies the weak energy condition turns out to be dynamically unstable.
• A thin-layer black hole mimicker is stable only if it has positive pressure and negative surface density (such as a wormhole), or vice versa.