Q-Balls Meet Fuzzballs: Non-BPS Microstate Geometries

We construct a three-parameter family of non-extremal microstate geometries, or "microstrata," that are dual to states and deformations of the D1-D5 CFT. These families are non-extremal analogues of superstrata. We find these microstrata by using a Q-ball-inspired Ansatz that reduces the equations of motion to solving for eleven functions of one variable. We then solve this system both perturbatively and numerically and the results match extremely well. We find that the solutions have normal mode frequencies that depend upon the amplitudes of the excitations. We also show that, at higher order in perturbations, some of the solutions, having started with normalizable modes, develop a "non-normalizable" part, suggesting that the microstrata represent states in a perturbed form of the D1-D5 CFT. This paper is intended as a "Proof of Concept" for the Q-ball-inspired approach, and we will describe how it opens the way to many interesting follow-up calculations both in supergravity and in the dual holographic field theory.