The bizarre anti-de Sitter spacetime

Abstract

Anti-de Sitter spacetime is important in general relativity and modern field theory. We review its geometrical features and properties of light signals and free particles moving in it. By applying only the elementary tools of tensor calculus, we derive ab initio of all these properties and show that they are really weird. One finds superluminal velocities of light and particles, infinite particle energy necessary to escape at infinite distance and spacetime regions inaccessible by a free fall, though reachable by an accelerated spaceship. Radial timelike geodesics are identical to the circular ones and actually all timelike geodesics are identical to one circle in a fictitious five-dimensional space. Employing the latter space, one is able to explain these bizarre features of anti-de Sitter spacetime; in this sense the spacetime is not self-contained. This is not a physical world.