The microstate structure of black holes involves a variety of ingredients — strings and branes — that lie beyond supergravity, yet it is often difficult to achieve quantitative control over these ingredients in a regime where the state being described approximates a black hole. This talk will show how 2d current algebra provides a tool to describe the stringy objects that govern the black hole phase transition in AdS$_3$.

Enrico Fermi Institute and Dept. of Physics – Chicago