Small black holes and near-extremal CFTs

Pure theories of AdS(3) quantum gravity are conjectured to be dual to CFTs with sparse spectra of light primary operators. The sparsest possible spectrum consistent with modular invariance includes only black hole states above the vacuum. Witten conjectured the existence of a family of extremal CFTs, which realize this spectrum for all admissible values of the central charge. We consider the quantum corrections to the classical spectrum, and propose a specific modification of Witten's conjecture which takes into account the existence of small black hole states. These have zero classical horizon area, with a calculable entropy attributed solely to loop effects. Our conjecture passes various consistency checks, especially when generalized to include theories with supersymmetry. In theories with N = 2 supersymmetry, this near-extremal CFT proposal precisely evades the no-go results of Gaberdiel et al.