New forms of attraction: attractor saddles for the black hole index

Abstract The count of microstates for supersymmetric black holes is typically obtained from a supersymmetric index in weakly-coupled string theory. We find the saddles in the gravitational path integral corresponding to this index in a general theory of N $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 2 supergravity in asymptotically flat space. This saddle exhibits a new attractor mechanism which explains the agreement between the string theory index and the macroscopic entropy. These saddles are smooth, complex Euclidean spinning black holes that are supersymmetric but not extremal, i.e. they are formally finite-temperature solutions. With this new mechanism, the scalars and the electromagnetic fields get attracted to temperature- and moduli-independent values at the north and south poles of the rotating black hole, although they vary along the Euclidean horizon in a non-universal way. Further, although the area and the spin of the black hole depend non-trivially on the temperature and on the moduli, the free energy is essentially a function only of the black hole charges (apart from a trivial dependence on the temperature and the moduli through the BPS mass), and agrees with the string theory index.