Decoding stringy near-supersymmetric black holes

Abstract: Building on the recent discovery of the first candidate black hole operator in $\mathcal{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills, we explore the near-supersymmetric aspects of the theory that capture lightly excited, highly stringy black holes. We extend the superspace formalism describing the classically supersymmetric (1/16-BPS) sector of $\mathcal{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills and compute a large number of one-loop anomalous dimensions. Despite being in the highly stringy regime, we find hints of a gap in the spectrum, similar to that found by a gravitational path integral. We also determine the actual expression of the first candidate black hole operator at weak gauge coupling, going beyond the cohomological construction.