Axion-Dilaton Black Holes

In this talk some essential features of stringy black holes are described. We consider charged four-dimensional axion-dilaton black holes. The Hawking temperature and the entropy of all solutions are shown to be simple functions of the squares of supercharges, defining the positivity bounds. Spherically symmetric and multi black hole solutions are presented. The extreme solutions have some unbroken supersymmetries. Axion-dilaton black holes with zero entropy and zero area of the horizon form a family of stable particle-like objects, which we call holons. We discuss the possibility of splitting of nearly extreme black holes into holons.Comment: 8 pages, LATEX, (Talk presented at the TEXAS/PASCOS conference, Berkeley, December 1992

Inflation, Symmetry, and B-Modes

We examine the role of using symmetry and effective field theory in inflationary model building. We describe the standard formulation of starting with an approximate shift symmetry for a scalar field, and then introducing corrections systematically in order to maintain control over the inflationary potential. We find that this leads to models in good agreement with recent data. On the other hand, there are attempts in the literature to deviate from this paradigm by invoking other symmetries and corrections. In particular: in a suite of recent papers, several authors have made the claim that standard Einstein gravity with a cosmological constant and a massless scalar carries conformal symmetry. They further claim that such a theory carries another hidden symmetry; a global SO(1,1) symmetry. By deforming around the global SO(1,1) symmetry, they are able to produce a range of inflationary models with asymptotically flat potentials, whose flatness is claimed to be protected by these symmetries. These models tend to give rise to B-modes with small amplitude. Here we explain that these authors are merely introducing a redundancy into the description, not an actual conformal symmetry. Furthermore, we explain that the only real (global) symmetry in these models is not at all hidden, but is completely manifest when expressed in the Einstein frame; it is in fact the shift symmetry of a scalar field. When analyzed systematically as an effective field theory, deformations do not generally produce asymptotically flat potentials and small B-modes, but other types of potentials with B-modes of appreciable amplitude. Such simple models typically also produce the observed red spectral index, Gaussian fluctuations, etc. In short: simple models of inflation, organized by expanding around a shift symmetry, are in excellent agreement with recent data.Comment: 9 pages in double column format. V2: Updated to coincide with version published in Physics Letters

Brane-anti-brane Democracy

We suggest a duality invariant formula for the entropy and temperature of non-extreme black holes in supersymmetric string theory. The entropy is given in terms of the duality invariant parameter of the deviation from extremality and 56 SU(8) covariant central charges. It interpolates between the entropies of Schwarzschild solution and extremal solutions with various amount of unbroken supersymmetries and therefore serves for classification of black holes in supersymmetric string theories. We introduce the second auxiliary 56 via E(7) symmetric constraint. The symmetric and antisymmetric combinations of these two multiplets are related via moduli to the corresponding two fundamental representations of E(7): brane and anti-brane "numbers." Using the CPT as well as C symmetry of the entropy formula and duality one can explain the mysterious simplicity of the non-extreme black hole area formula in terms of branes and anti-branes.Comment: LaTeX, 12 pages, no figure

Multivalued Entropy of Supersymmetric Black Holes

The supersymmetric flow equations describing the flow of moduli from infinity to the black hole horizon, and vice versa, are derived in the five-dimensional theories where the moduli space of the very special geometry has disjoint branches. The multiple solutions are derived from the `off the horizon' attractor equation. Within each branch, the black hole entropy, as usual, depends only on the near horizon attractor values of moduli, i.e. the entropy depends on the charges and on coefficients of the cubic polynomial. It does not depend on the values of the moduli fields at infinity. However, the entropy, as well as the near horizon values of the moduli fields, are shown to depend on the choice of the branch specified by the choice of the set of moduli at infinity. We present examples of BPS black hole solutions with the same Q_I and C_{IJK}, whose entropies differ significantly.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, Latex, JHEP styl

Quantization of p-branes, D-p-branes and M-branes

Killing spinors of space-time BPS configurations play an important role in quantization of theories with the fermionic worldvolume local symmetry. We show here how it works for the GS superstring, BST supermembrane and M-5-brane. We show that the non-linear generalization of the (2,0) d=6 tensor supermultiplet action is the M-5-brane action in a Killing gauge. For D-p-branes the novel feature of quantization is that they can be quantized Lorentz covariantly, in particular, for D-0-brane a gauge exists where the action is covariant and free. We present a general condition on possible choice of gauges for the kappa-symmetric branes.Comment: 9 pages, Talk at STRINGS'97 Meeting, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 16-21 Jun 199