We discuss some aspects of higher-dimensional gravitational solitons and kinks, including in particular their stability. We illustrate our discussion with the examples of (non-BPS) higher-dimensional Taub-NUT solutions as the spatial metrics in (6 + 1) and (8 + 1) dimensions. We find them to be stable against small but non-infinitesimal disturbances, but unstable against large ones, which can l...

Recent work has demonstrated an attractor mechanism for extremal rotating black holes subject to the assumption of a near-horizon SO(2, 1) symmetry. We prove the existence of this symmetry for any extremal black hole with the same number of rotational symmetries as known four and five dimensional solutions (including black rings). The result is valid for a general two-derivative theory of gravi...

We study the Lie algebra of infinitesimal isometries on compact Sasakian and K–contact manifolds. On a Sasakian manifold which is not a space form or 3– Sasakian, every Killing vector field is an infinitesimal automorphism of the Sasakian structure. For a manifold with K–contact structure, we prove that there exists a Killing vector field of constant length which is not an infinitesimal automor...

We discuss some aspects of higher-dimensional gravitational solitons and kinks, including in particular their stability. We illustrate our discussion with the examples of (non-BPS) higher-dimensional Taub-NUT solutions as the spatial metrics in (6 + 1) and (8 + 1) dimensions. We find them to be stable against small but non-infinitesimal disturbances, but unstable against large ones, which can l...