String Theory Effects on Black Hole Physics

Abstract

This thesis focuses on recent developments in black hole physics in the context of string theory. The two main topics discussed here are: the effects of quantum/string corrections to five dimensional black holes; and the holographic description of two dimensional black holes.

In the gravitational theory the quantum/string corrections are encoded in higher derivative terms in the supergravity action, which are governed by the mixed gauge-gravitational Chern-Simons term. We describe the full asymptotically flat solution of black strings and black holes, and construct the near horizon attractor geometries. With these solutions in hand, we study the thermodynamic properties of black holes beyond the leading order. One important achievement was finding the corrected attractor geometries that contain a three dimensional Anti-de Sitter factor. This allows us to verify that the space-time central charge and the anomaly based derivation of it exactly agree.

Another motivation to study higher derivative corrections is to resolve the singularities of small black strings. These objects correspond to classical solutions with a naked singularity and vanishing entropy. Once the stringy corrections are included, we obtain completely smooth geometries with the correct asymptotic behavior.

We also studied the effect of the Taub-NUT geometry on the sub-leading corrections to the black hole entropy. This space contains a contractible circle that allows one to lift a four dimensional black hole to a five dimensional black hole by tuning the size of the circle. In the microscopic theory, due to the presence of Taub-NUT, the spectrum of states acquires additional modes. These states exactly account for the shift between 5D and 4D corrections to the entropy.

Finally, we develop holographic renormalization for two dimensional gravity on Anti-de Sitter space. The transformation properties of the stress tensor indicate that the asymptotic SL(2,R) conformal symmetry of the theory is enhanced to a Virasoro algebra. The resulting central charge raises the possibility of being independent of the matter content in the theory. We also show that our analysis is consistent with dimensional reduction of three dimensional gravity.