The black hole/string transition in AdS3 and confining backgrounds

Abstract

A bstract String stars, or Horowitz-Polchinski solutions, are Euclidean string theory saddles with a normalizable condensate of thermal winding strings. String stars were suggested as a possible description of stringy (Euclidean) black holes close to the Hagedorn temperature. In this work, we continue the study initiated in [1] by investigating the thermodynamic properties of string stars in asymptotically (thermal) anti-de Sitter backgrounds. First, we discuss the case of AdS 3 with mixed RR and NS-NS fluxes (including the pure NS-NS system) and comment on a possible BTZ/string transition unique to AdS 3 . Second, we present new “winding-string gas” saddles for confining holographic backgrounds such as the Witten model and determine the subleading correction to their Hagedorn temperature. We speculate a black brane/string transition in these models and argue for a possible relation to the deconfined phase of 3+1 dimensional pure Yang-Mills.