D1-D5-P microstates at the cap

Abstract

The geometries describing D1-D5-P bound states in string theory have three regions: flat asymptotics, an anti-de Sitter throat, and a 'cap' region at the bottom of the throat. We identify the CFT description of a known class of supersymmetric D1-D5-P microstate geometries which describe degrees of freedom in the cap region. The class includes both regular solutions and solutions with conical defects, and generalizes configurations with known CFT descriptions: a parameter related to spectral flow in the CFT is generalized from integer to fractional values. We provide strong evidence for this identification by comparing the massless scalar excitation spectrum between gravity and CFT and finding exact agreement.