Non-extremal Black Hole Microstates: Fuzzballs of Fire or Fuzzballs of Fuzz ?

Abstract

We construct the first family of microstate geometries of near-extremal black holes, by placing metastable supertubes inside certain scaling supersymmetric smooth microstate geometries. These fuzzballs differ from the classical black hole solution macroscopically at the horizon scale, and for certain probes the fluctuations between various fuzzballs will be visible as thermal noise far away from the horizon. We discuss whether these fuzzballs appear to infalling observers as fuzzballs of fuzz or as fuzzballs of fire. The existence of these solutions suggests that the singularity of non-extremal black holes is resolved all the way to the outer horizon and this "backwards in time" singularity resolution can shed light on the resolution of spacelike cosmological singularities.

Figures (10)

• Figure 1: Singularity resolution scale.
• Figure 2: Heuristic picture of scaling microstate geometries.
• Figure 3: Our setup consists of a central blob of three centers and two satellite blobs of two centers each, with the GH charges as given in the figure.
• Figure 4: Schematic picture of our microstate configuration.
• Figure 5: Zoom on the supertube potential for charges $(q_1,q_2,d_3) = (10,-50,1)$ in background 2. Note the metastable minimum near $z_6 =23.91$ (and its mirror near $z_2 =-23.91$). The contour plot shows that this minimum is of "Mexican hat -- type" in the $z-\rho$ plane around the center $z_6$ ($z_2$); darker colors mean lower energy. On can see that this minimum has no runaway behavior in the $\rho$ direction and hence is truly metastable. The supertube in that minimum can tunnel to a supersymmetric state. Note also that the minima near the central blob are in fact two mirror copies of a Mexican hat-type circular band of minima, as the contour plot in the bottom left corner shows.