String Junctions and Bound States of Intersecting Branes

We study four-dimensional black hole configurations which result from wrapping M5-branes on a Calabi-Yau manifold, as well as Udual realizations. Our aim is to understand the microscopic degrees of freedom responsible for the existence of bound states of multiple branes. The details depend on the chosen U-frame; in some cases, they are massless string junctions. We also identify a perturbative description in which these states correspond to twisted strings of intersecting D3-branes at an orbifold singularity. In each case, these are the preponderant states of the spacetime infrared conformal field theory and account for the entropy of the blackhole. email:[email protected] email:[email protected]