The harder they fall, the bigger they become: tidal trapping of strings by microstate geometries

Abstract

We consider the fate of a massless (or ultra-relativistic massive) string probe propagating down the BTZ-like throat of a microstate geometry in the D1-D5 system. Far down the throat, the probe encounters large tidal forces that stretch and excite the string. The excitations are limited by the very short transit time through the region of large tidal force, leading to a controlled approximation to tidal stretching. We show that the amount of stretching is proportional to the incident energy, and that it robs the probe of the kinetic energy it would need to travel back up the throat. As a consequence, the probe is effectively trapped far down the throat and, through repeated return passes, scrambles into the ensemble of nearby microstates. We propose that this tidal trapping may lead to weak gravitational echoes.