BPS fivebrane stars and BTZ black holes

A bstract We construct a large new class of BPS supergravity solutions parametrized by arbitrary chiral wave profiles on fundamental string and Neveu-Schwarz fivebrane sources. The effective action approach we employ describes the regime where the brane sources are slightly separated. String probes see these backgrounds as smooth and effectively capped off at the scale of that separation. Within the space of solutions is a large ensemble of ultracompact objects exhibiting many of the features of extremal BTZ black holes, in particular having a deep AdS 2 throat. We present the details of solutions with circular source profiles, and compare them to known superstratum geometries. The separation of the sources makes them structurally more like BPS fivebrane stars than like extremal black hole microstates. When evaluated on the supergravity background, the brane effective action governs (chaotic) near-BPS dynamics, and exhibits a collective mode analogous to the Schwarzian mode of AdS 2 black holes. Finally, we discuss the approach to the black hole phase as the sources coalesce, in which the semiclassical approximation breaks down due to the appearance of light D-brane excitations; this bulk realization of the fivebrane deconfinement transition connects directly to the Hawking-Page transition.