English

Allowable Complex Black Holes in the Euclidean Gravitational Path Integral

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-02-16 v3

Abstract

The Euclidean Gravitational Path Integral has proven remarkably effective in the quantum regime of black hole physics. In this work, we examine the applicability of the Kontsevich-Segal-Witten (KSW) criterion for admissible complex metrics in the context of the Euclidean Gravitational Path Integral. We find that, for the super-conformal index of N=4{\cal N}=4 SYM with unequal angular momenta, the black hole saddle points violate the KSW criterion precisely where the statistical description of the index breaks down. The corresponding critical point coincides with a phase transition into two-component ``grey galaxy'' configurations in the micro-canonical ensemble.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.05979,
  title  = {Allowable Complex Black Holes in the Euclidean Gravitational Path Integral},
  author = {Vineeth Krishna and Finn Larsen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.05979},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

24 pages, 2 figures; updated references, corrected typos

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:23:02.861Z