English

The black hole/string transition in AdS$_3$ and confining backgrounds

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-09-13 v4

Abstract

String stars, or Horowitz-Polchinski solutions, are Euclidean string theory saddles with a normalizable condensate of thermal winding strings. String stars were suggested as a possible description of stringy (Euclidean) black holes close to the Hagedorn temperature. In this work, we continue the study initiated in arXiv:2202.06966 by investigating the thermodynamic properties of string stars in asymptotically (thermal) anti-de Sitter backgrounds. First, we discuss the case of AdS3_3 with mixed RR and NS-NS fluxes (including the pure NS-NS system) and comment on a possible BTZ/string transition unique to AdS3_3. Second, we present new ``winding-string gas'' saddles for confining holographic backgrounds such as the Witten model, and determine the subleading correction to their Hagedorn temperature. We speculate a black brane/string transition in these models and argue for a possible relation to the deconfined phase of 3+1 dimensional pure Yang-Mills.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2303.09567,
  title  = {The black hole/string transition in AdS$_3$ and confining backgrounds},
  author = {Erez Y. Urbach},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.09567},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

24 pages (7 figures); v2: added references; v3: A revised discussion for general type II winding condensates EFT (section 2.1) and AdS-sized solutions (section 4) in particular. Some changes of conventions for brevity; v4: minor editing

R2 v1 2026-06-28T09:20:36.123Z