On the Stability of a Stringy Black Hole

We study the stability under perturbations of a charged four dimensional stringy black hole arising from gauging a previously studied WZW model. We find that the black hole is stable only in the extremal case $Q=M$.Comment: 14 pages + 1 figure (not included but available on request

The vacuum polarization around an axionic stringy black hole

We consider the effect of vacuum polarization around the horizon of a 4 dimensional axionic stringy black hole. In the extreme degenerate limit ($Q_a=M$), the lower limit on the black hole mass for avoiding the polarization of the surrounding medium is $M\gg (10^{-15}\div 10^{-11})m_p$ ($m_p$ is the proton mass), according to the assumed value of the axion mass ($m_a\simeq (10^{-3}\div 10^{-6})~eV$). In this case, there are no upper bounds on the mass due to the absence of the thermal radiation by the black hole. In the nondegenerate (classically unstable) limit ($Q_a<M$), the black hole always polarizes the surrounding vacuum, unless the effective cosmological constant of the effective stringy action diverges.Comment: 7 pages, phyzzx.tex, ROM2F-92-3

Non-linear WKB Analysis of the String Equation

We apply non-linear WKB analysis to the study of the string equation. Even though the solutions obtained with this method are not exact, they approximate extremely well the true solutions, as we explicitly show using numerical simulations. ``Physical'' solutions are seen to be separatrices corresponding to degenerate Riemann surfaces. We obtain an analytic approximation in excellent agreement with the numerical solution found by Parisi et al. for the $k=3$ case.Comment: 21 pages. To appear in the proceedings of the Research Conference on Advanced Quantum Field Theory and Critical Phenomena, held in Como (Italy), June 17-21, 1991 -- World Scientifi

A Conformal Affine Toda Model of 2D Black Holes: A Quantum Study of the Evaporation End-Point

In this paper we reformulate the dilaton-gravity theory of Callan \etal\ as a new effective conformal field theory which turns out to be a generalization of the so-called $SL_2$-conformal affine Toda (CAT) theory studied some times ago by Babelon and Bonora. We quantize this model, thus keeping in account the dilaton-gravity quantum effects. We then implement a Renormalization Group analysis to study the black hole thermodynamics and the final state of the Hawking evaporation.Comment: 15 pages, phyzzx, ROM-2F-92-5

Multi - instantons, supersymmetry and topological field theories

In this letter we argue that instanton-dominated Green's functions in N=2 Super Yang-Mills theories can be equivalently computed either using the so-called constrained instanton method or making reference to the topological twisted version of the theory. Defining an appropriate BRST operator (as a supersymmetry plus a gauge variation), we also show that the expansion coefficients of the Seiberg-Witten effective action for the low-energy degrees of freedom can be written as integrals of total derivatives over the moduli space of self-dual gauge connections

Quantum Models of Black Hole Evaporation

The discovery of black-hole evaporation represented in many respects a revolutionary event in scientific world; as such, in giving answers to open questions, it gave rise to new problems part of which are still not resolved. Here we want to make a brief review of such problems and examine some possible solutions. Invited Talk at the "Workshop on String Theory, Quantum Gravity and the Unification of the Fundamental Interactions" Rome, September 21-26Comment: 9 pages, ROM2F-92/6

Dynamical Supersymmetry Breaking in Intersecting Brane Models

In this paper we study dynamical supersymmetry breaking in absence of gravity with the matter content of the minimal supersymmetric standard model. The hidden sector of the theory is a strongly coupled gauge theory, realized in terms of microscopic variables which condensate to form mesons. The supersymmetry breaking scalar potential combines F, D terms with instanton generated interactions in the Higgs-mesons sector. We show that for a large region in parameter space the vacuum breaks in addition to supersymmetry also electroweak gauge symmetry. We furthermore present local D-brane configurations that realize these supersymmetry breaking patterns.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures, pdflate

S-duality and the prepotential in N=2* theories (I): the ADE algebras

The prepotential of N=2* supersymmetric theories with unitary gauge groups in an Omega-background satisfies a modular anomaly equation that can be recursively solved order by order in an expansion for small mass. By requiring that S-duality acts on the prepotential as a Fourier transform we generalise this result to N=2* theories with gauge algebras of the D and E type and show that their prepotentials can be written in terms of quasi-modular forms of SL(2,Z). The results are checked against microscopic multi-instanton calculus based on localization for the A and D series and reproduce the known 1-instanton prepotential of the pure N=2 theories for any gauge group of ADE type. Our results can also be used to obtain the multi-instanton terms in the exceptional theories for which the microscopic instanton calculus and the ADHM construction are not available.Comment: 33 pages, LaTeX2e, added references, version to be published in JHE