A review of the D1/D5 system and five dimensional black hole from supergravity and brane viewpoints

We review some aspects of the D1/D5 system of type IIB string theory and the associated five dimensional black hole. We include a pedagogical discussion of the construction of relevant classical solutions in supergravity. We discuss the gauge theory and the conformal field theory relevant to D-brane description of these systems. In order to discuss Hawking radiation we are automatically led to a discussion of near-horizon geometries and their relation to gauge theories and conformal field theories. We show how inputs from AdS/CFT correspondence resolve some earlier puzzles regarding Hawking radiation. Besides the D1/D5 system, we include a brief discussion of some nonsupersymmetric systems which show unexpected agreement between supergravity and perturbative brane/string computations. We also comment briefly on possible implications of the AdS/CFT relation for the correspondence principle and for the principle of black hole complementarity. e-mail: [email protected], [email protected] ∗ Expanded version of lectures presented at the ICTP Spring School, April 1999.