Horizon fluff, semi-classical black hole microstates — Log-corrections to BTZ entropy and black hole/particle correspondence

A bstract According to the horizon fluff proposal microstates of a generic black hole belong to a certain subset of near horizon soft hairs that cannot be extended beyond the near horizon region. In [ 1 , 2 ] it was shown how the horizon fluff proposal works for AdS 3 black holes. In this work we clarify further this picture by showing that BTZ black hole microstates are in general among the coherent states in the Hilbert space associated with conic spaces or their Virasoro descendants, provided we impose a (Bohr-type) quantization condition on the angular deficit. Thus BTZ black holes may be viewed as condensates (or solitonic states) of AdS 3 particles. We provide canonical and microcanonical descriptions of the statistical mechanical system associated with BTZ black holes and their microstates, and relate them. As a further non-trivial check we show the horizon fluff proposal correctly reproduces the expected logarithmic corrections to the BTZ entropy.