Hidden Conformal Symmetries of Five-Dimensional Black Holes

TL;DR

This paper extends the concept of hidden conformal symmetries from 4D Kerr black holes to five-dimensional black holes in string theory, demonstrating their wave equations exhibit SL(2,R) symmetries and matching entropy and absorption results.

Contribution

It shows that five-dimensional black holes from string theory also possess hidden conformal symmetries, generalizing previous 4D results and providing detailed matches for physical observables.

Findings

Wave equations in these geometries can be expressed using SL(2,R) Casimirs.

Entropy and absorption cross sections match between CFT and geometry.

The results hold for non-extremal black holes with two spins and no U(1) charges.

Abstract

Recently it was shown by Castro, Maloney and Strominger (CMS) that 4D Kerr black holes have a "hidden" conformal symmetry. Using some old results of Cvetic and Larsen, I show that this result is very likely to hold also for the most general black holes in five dimensions arising from heterotic/type II string theory. In particular, we show how the wave equation in these geometries in the "near region" can be written in terms of SL(2,R) X SL(2,R) Casimirs. For the special case when the black hole has two spins but no U(1) charges, detailed matches for entropy and absorption cross sections between CFT and geometry are found. The black holes we consider need not be close to extremality.