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We discuss how string theory, and in particular the "fuzzball" paradigm, has already made and can make meaningful contributions to the phenomenology of strong gravity observations. We outline pertinent research directions for the near-future within this program, and emphasize the unique viewpoints that string theory and fuzzballs bring to phenomenology., 9 pages

Gravitational wave observations of the near-horizon region of black holes lend insight into the quantum nature of gravity. In particular, gravitational wave echoes have been identified as a potential signature of quantum gravity-inspired structure near the horizon. In this paper, we connect such observables to the language of black hole microstates in string theory and holography. To that end, we propose a toy model describing the AdS$_3$ near-horizon region of five-dimensional black holes, inspired by earlier work of Solodukhin. This model captures key features of recently constructed microstate geometries, and allows us to make three observations. First, we relate the language of AdS/CFT, in particular the holographic retarded two-point correlator, to effective parameters modeling the structure that are used in flat space gravitational wave literature. Second, we find that for a typical microstate, the `cap' of the microstructure is exponentially close to the horizon, making it an effective sub-Planckian correction to the black hole geometry, although the microstate geometry itself is classical. Third, using a microcanonical ensemble average over geometries, we find support for the claim that the gravitational wave echo amplitude in a typical quantum microstate of the black hole is exponentially suppressed by the black hole entropy., Comment: 47 pages

We establish a relation between certain classes of flux compactifications and certain families of black hole microstate solutions. This connection reveals a rather unexpected result: there exist supersymmetric solutions of N=8 supergravity that live inside many N=2 truncations, but are not supersymmetric inside any of them. If this phenomenon is generic, it indicates the possible existence of much larger families of supersymmetric black rings and black hole microstates than previously thought., 9 pages, LaTeX

This thesis investigates two main topics concerning black holes in extensions of general relativity inspired by string theory. First, the structure of the equations of motion underlying black hole solutions is considered, in theories of D-dimensional gravity coupled to scalars and vectors. For solutions preserving supersymmetry, the equations of motion have a dramatic simplification: they become first-order instead of the second-order equations one would expect. Recently, it was found that this is a feature some non-supersymmetric black hole solutions exhibit as well. We investigate if this holds more generally, by examining what the conditions are to have first-order equations for the scalar fields of non-supersymmetric black holes, that mimic the form of their supersymmetric counterparts. This is illustrated in examples. Second, the structure of black holes themselves is investigated. String theory has been successful in explaining the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy for (mainly supersymmetric) black holes from a microscopic perspective. However, it is not fully established what the interpretation of the corresponding 'microstates' should be in the gravitational description where the black hole picture is valid. There have been recent advances to understand the nature of black hole microstates in the gravity regime, such as the fuzzball proposal. A related idea says that black hole configurations with multiple centers are related to microstates of single-centered black holes. We report on work relating both pictures. As an aside, a relation between violations of causality for certain spacetimes (presence of closed timelike curves in the geometry) and a breakdown of unitarity in the dual conformal field theory is given., PhD thesis, 213 pages, 15 figures, dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Science at K.U.Leuven, Belgium

In these lecture notes, we take a closer look at the calculation of scattering amplitudes for the bosonic string. It is believed that string theories form the UV completions of (super)gravity theories. Support for this claim can be found in the (on-shell) scattering amplitudes of strings. On the other hand, studying these string scattering amplitudes opens a window on the UV behavior of the string theories themselves. In these short set of lectures, we discuss the two-dimensional Polyakov path integral for the string, and its gauge symmetries, the connection to Riemann surfaces and how to obtain some of the simplest string scattering amplitudes. We end with some comments on more advanced topics. For simplicity we limit ourselves to bosonic open string theory in 26 dimensions., Comment: 78 pages, 16 figures, Lecture notes based on lectures given at the fifth Modave School on Mathematical Physics (August 2009)

For both extremal and non-extremal spherically symmetric black holes in theories with massless scalars and vectors coupled to gravity, we derive a general form of first-order gradient flow equations, equivalent to the equations of motion. For theories that have a symmetric moduli space after a dimensional reduction over the timelike direction, we discuss the condition for such a gradient flow to exist. This note reviews the results of arXiv:0810.1528 [hep-th]., 6 pages, contribution to the proceedings of the 4th RTN Workshop 'Constituents, Fundamental Forces and Symmetries of the Universe', Varna, 11-17 September 2008; v2: a reference added