The Special Locus

TL;DR

This paper uncovers the supergravity structure of the special locus, revealing algebraic relations between fields and enabling the construction of complex microstate geometries in higher dimensions.

Contribution

It identifies the supergravity structure of the special locus and generalizes the Ansatz to more complex six-dimensional supergravity excitations.

Findings

Dual vector fields must vanish on the special locus

Algebraic relations exist between tensor gauge fields in 6D and 10D

Constructed the full 6D uplift of the simplest special locus

Abstract

The special locus plays an important role in the construction of the non-BPS microstate geometries known as microstrata. These supergravity solutions are dual to combinations of left-moving and right-moving momentum states in the D1-D5 CFT and because supersymmetry is broken the anomalous dimensions of these states are not protected. This means even the simplest combinations of excitations can create a cascade of frequency dependences through the non-linearities of the supergravity interactions. Solutions on the special locus manage to lock some of these anomalous dimensions together and allow one to construct complete solutions using gauged supergravity in three dimensions. In the dual holographic CFT, the special locus has been shown to correspond to creating a "pure" gas of single particle states, however, in supergravity the special locus remains mysterious especially because it does not seem to be defined by a geometric symmetry. In this paper we reveal the supergravity structure of the special locus, first in three-dimensional supergravity and then in the uplift to six dimensions and IIB supergravity. The key insight is that, in three dimensions, a family of dual vector fields must vanish, and this implies that there are algebraic relations between tensor gauge fields in six and ten dimensions. These insights show how one can generalize the special locus Ansatz to more general mode excitations of six-dimensional supergravity. We also construct the full six-dimensional uplift of the simplest special locus.