AdS${}_3$ Pure Gravity and Stringy Unitarity

Abstract

We construct a unitary, modular-invariant torus partition function of a two-dimensional conformal field theory with a Virasoro primary spectral gap of ${\Delta }_{\ast }=\frac{c-1}{12}$ above the vacuum. The twist gap is identical, apart from two states ${\mathcal{O}}_{\ast }$ with spin scaling linearly in the central charge $c$. These states admit an AdS${}_3$ interpretation as strongly coupled strings. All other states are black hole microstates.

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