Decoding stringy near-supersymmetric black holes

TL;DR

This paper investigates near-supersymmetric black holes in $ ext{AdS}_5$ via $ ext{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills, extending superspace formalism, computing anomalous dimensions, and identifying candidate black hole operators at weak coupling.

Contribution

It extends the superspace formalism for the 1/16-BPS sector, computes anomalous dimensions, and explicitly constructs candidate black hole operators beyond cohomology.

Findings

Hints of a spectral gap similar to gravitational predictions

Explicit expression for the first candidate black hole operator at weak coupling

Extension of superspace formalism to near-supersymmetric regimes

Abstract

Building on the recent discovery of the first candidate black hole operator in $\mathcal{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills, we explore the near-supersymmetric aspects of the theory that capture lightly excited, highly stringy black holes. We extend the superspace formalism describing the classically supersymmetric (1/16-BPS) sector of $\mathcal{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills and compute a large number of one-loop anomalous dimensions. Despite being in the highly stringy regime, we find hints of a gap in the spectrum, similar to that found by a gravitational path integral. We also determine the actual expression of the first candidate black hole operator at weak gauge coupling, going beyond the cohomological construction.