A comment on no-force conditions for black holes and branes

Abstract

Abstract In the context of the weak gravity conjecture the notion of quasi-extremality for black holes and branes was recently defined as the property of having either vanishing horizon size or surface gravity. It was derived that such objects obey a no-force condition. In this short note I present a simplified derivation that is essentially present in the formalism of timelike reduction pioneered by Breitenlohner, Gibbons and Maison. This formalism also provides the natural definition of quasi-extremality for gravitational instantons (and wormholes) sourced by axion fluxes and strengthens the argument that macroscopic axion wormholes do not contribute in the path integral since they are self-repulsive in a Euclidean sense.