A review of the D1/D5 system and five dimensional black hole from supergravity and brane viewpoint

We review some aspects of the D1/D5 system of type IIB string theory and theassociated five dimensional black hole. We include a pedagogical discussion ofthe construction of relevant classical solutions in supergravity. We discussthe gauge theory and the conformal field theory relevant to D-brane descriptionof these systems. In order to discuss Hawking radiation we are automaticallyled to a discussion of near-horizon geometries and their relation to gaugetheories and conformal field theories. We show how inputs from AdS/CFTcorrespondence resolve some earlier puzzles regarding Hawking radiation.Besides the D1/D5 system, we include a brief discussion of somenonsupersymmetric systems which show unexpected agreement between supergravityand perturbative brane/string computations. We also comment briefly on possibleimplications of the AdS/CFT relation for the correspondence principle and forthe principle of black hole complementarity.