Black hole meiosis

Abstract

The enumeration of BPS bound states in string theory needs refinement. Studying partition functions of particles made from D-branes wrapped on algebraic Calabi-Yau 3-folds, and classifying states using split attractor flow trees, we extend the method for computing a refined BPS index, arXiv:0810.4301. For certain D-particles, a finite number of microstates, namely polar states, exclusively realized as bound states, determine an entire partition function (elliptic genus). This underlines their crucial importance: one might call them the `chromosomes' of a D-particle or a black hole. As polar states also can be affected by our refinement, previous predictions on elliptic genera are modified. This can be metaphorically interpreted as `crossing-over in the meiosis of a D-particle'. Our results improve on hep-th/0702012, provide non-trivial evidence for a strong split attractor flow tree conjecture, and thus suggest that we indeed exhaust the BPS spectrum. In the D-brane description of a bound state, the necessity for refinement results from the fact that tachyonic strings split up constituent states into `generic' and `special' states. These are enumerated separately by topological invariants, which turn out to be partitions of Donaldson-Thomas invariants. As modular predictions provide a check on many of our results, we have compelling evidence that our computations are correct.