Hagedorn temperature from the thermal scalar in AdS and pp-wave backgrounds

A bstract We propose a thermal scalar equation of motion (EOM) that takes into account curvature corrections for backgrounds supported by Ramond-Ramond fluxes. This can be used to obtain the Hagedorn temperature for type II string theory on AdS and pp-wave backgrounds. For Ramond-Ramond flux supported pp-waves we show that the proposed thermal scalar EOM reproduces the leading curvature correction in the Hagedorn temperature equation obtained from the type II string theory spectrum. Furthermore, we use the thermal scalar EOM to obtain curvature corrections to the Hagedorn temperature for the AdS 5 × S 5 and AdS 4 × ℂ P 3 backgrounds. These corrections match with strong coupling results of the integrable dual field theories, recently obtained by the Quantum Spectral Curve technique.