Long strings and chiral primaries in the hybrid formalism

Abstract

We revisit two related phenomena in $\mathrm{AdS}_3$ string theory backgrounds. At pure NS-NS flux, the spectrum contains a continuum of long strings which can escape to the boundary of $\mathrm{AdS}_3$ at a finite cost of energy. Related to this are certain gaps in the BPS spectrum one computes from the RNS worldsheet description. One expects that both these effects disappear when perturbing slightly away from the pure NS-NS flux background. We employ the hybrid formalism for mixed flux backgrounds to demonstrate directly from the worldsheet that this is indeed the case.