The landscape of multicentered black holes in string theory is highly complex. At zero temperature and at fixed charge there exist an exponential number of solutions to the equations of motion, including single centered and a plethora of multicentered configurations. As we tune the total charge, we see that macroscopically different solutions are thermodynamically dominant. Holographically, this implies that the dual field theory must have a very complex free energy landscape with an exponential number of local minima, very characteristic of the free energy landscapes that appear in the study of spin glasses. Our first attempt at understanding the the glassy nature of these black holes is summarized in arXiv:1108.5821v2, where we populated large non-extremal centers with bound probes in order to understand the phase structure of these systems. There is clear evidence of glassyness, but the evidence is made stronger when these black holes are put in a sufficiently large box. I will discuss largely unfinished work where we attempt a more natural way to embed these probe bound centers in a box, namely in AdS, where we may actually use the tools of holography to understand them.

Harvard