Gravitational index of the heterotic string

A bstract The fundamental heterotic string has a tower of BPS states whose supersymmetric index has an exponential growth in the charges. We construct the saddle-point of the gravitational path integral corresponding to this index. The saddle-point configuration is a supersymmetric rotating non-extremal Euclidean black hole. This configuration is singular in the two-derivative theory. We show that the addition of higher-derivative terms in four-dimensional $$ \mathcal{N} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:math> = 2 supergravity resolves the singularity. In doing so, we extend the recently-developed “new attractor mechanism” to include the effect of higher-derivative terms. Remarkably, the one-loop, four-derivative F-term contribution to the prepotential leads to a precise match of the gravitational and microscopic index. We also comment, using the effective theory near the horizon, on the possibility of a string-size near-extremal black hole. Our results clarify the meaning of different descriptions of this system in the literature. The thermal state transitions to a winding condensate and a gas of strings without ever reaching a small black hole, while the index is captured by the rotating Euclidean black hole solution and is constant and thus smoothly connected to the microscopic ensemble.