AdS/CFT for BPS and non-BPS black hole microstates Seminar

The study of black hole microstates in string theory is an important problem, which has implications for the information paradox. Of particular interest are supergravity solutions describing BPS and near-BPS D1-D5-P bound states in string theory. These solutions have flat asymptotics, an AdS throat, and a 'cap' region at the bottom of the throat. I will present work which identifies the CFT description of a class of BPS D1-D5-P microstate geometries which describe degrees of freedom in the cap region. This class includes both regular solutions and solutions with conical defects. The CFT states may be described in terms of a generalized spectral flow operation which arises in the presence of twist operators. I will also describe work in progress on generalizing these results to a class of non-extremal black hole microstates, which radiate via a unitary version of Hawking radiation.