Point mass geometries, spectral flow and AdS3-CFT2 correspondence

We discuss, in terms of the AdS(3)-CFT2 correspondence, a one-parameter family of (asymptotically AdS(3)) conical geometries which are generated by point masses and interpolate between AdS(3) and BTZ space-times. We show that these correspond to spectral flow in N = (4,4) SCFT2 which interpolate between NS and R sectors. Our method involves representing the conical spaces as solutions of three-dimensional supergravity based on the supergroup SU(1,1 \ 2) X SU(1,1 \ 2). The boundary SCFT we use is based on the D1/D5 system. The correspondence includes comparing the Euclidean free energies between supergravity and SCFT for the family of conical spaces including BTZ black holes, and a concrete proposal for representing the point mass by a vertex operator in the SCFT. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.