Macroscopic superstrings as interpolating solitons

It is known that, in string sigma-model metric, the `extreme' fivebrane solution of D=10 supergravity interpolates between D=10 Minkowski spacetime and a supersymmetric $S^3$ compactification to a linear dilaton vacuum. We show here that, in {\it fivebrane} sigma-model metric, the extreme string solution of D=10 supergravity interpolates between Minkowski spacetime and a hitherto unknown supersymmetric $S^7$ compactification of d=10 supergravity to a three-dimensional anti-de Sitter generalization of the linear dilaton vacuum, which may be invariantly characterized in terms of conformal Killing vectors. The dilaton field diverges near the string core but this divergence may be eliminated by re-interpreting the string solution as the extreme membrane solution of 11-dimensional supergravity. We show that the latter has an analytic extension through a regular degenerate event horizon to an interior region containing a curvature singularity. We obtain analogous results for other extended object solutions of supergravity theories.Comment: 12 page

Anti-gravitating BPS monopoles and dyons

We show that the exact static, i.e. `anti-gravitating', magnetic multi monopole solutions of the Einstein/Maxwell/dilaton-YM/Higgs equations found by Kastor, London, Traschen, and the authors, for arbitrary non-zero dilaton coupling constant $a$, are equivalent to the string theory BPS magnetic monopole solutions of Harvey and Liu when $a=\sqrt{3}$. For this value of $a$, the monopole solutions also solve the equations of five-dimensional supergravity/YM theory. We also discuss some features of the dyon solutions obtained by boosting in the fifth dimension and some features of the moduli space of anti-gravitating multi-monopoles.Comment: 15 pp. Phyzz

Supergravity solitons and non-perturbative superstrings

A review is given of the implications of supersymmetric black holes for the non-perturbative formulation of toroidally compactified superstrings, with particular emphasis on symmetry enhancement at special vacua and S-duality of the heterotic string.Comment: Latex 8pp. To appear in Procs. of 1995 Trieste Spring Superstring School and Worksho

Open M5-branes

We show how, in heterotic M-theory, an M5-brane in the 11-dimensional bulk may end on an ``M9-brane'' boundary, the M5-brane boundary being a Yang monopole 4-brane. This possibility suggests various novel 5-brane configurations of heterotic M-theory, in particular a static M5-brane suspended between the two M9-brane boundaries, for which we find the asymptotic heterotic supergravity solution.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, version to appear in PR

Gauged Supergravity Vacua From Intersecting Branes

Domain wall and electrovac solutions of gauged N=4 D=4 supergravity, with gauge group SU(2) or SU(2)xSU(2), are interpreted as supersymmetric Kaluza-Klein vacua of N=1 D=10 supergravity. These vacua are shown to be the near-horizon geometries of certain intersecting brane solutions.Comment: 13 pages, no figures, Latex. Revised to take into account some earlier work on the subject. A typo in an equation has been correcte

Black Holes and Calogero Models

We argue that the large $n$ limit of the $n$-particle $SU(1,1|2)$ superconformal Calogero model provides a microscopic description of the extreme Reissner-Nordstr{\"o}m black hole in the near-horizon limit.Comment: Revtex 5pp. Revision includes improved discussion of entropy and includes an additional referenc

Supersymmetric Self-Gravitating Solitons

We show that the `instantonic' soliton of five-dimensional Yang-Mills theory and the closely related BPS monopole of four-dimensional Yang-Mills/Higgs theory continue to be exact static, and stable, solutions of these field theories even after the inclusion of gravitational, electromagnetic and, in the four-dimensional case, dilatonic interactions, provided that certain non-minimal interactions are included. With the inclusion of these interactions, which would be required by supersymmetry, these exact self-gravitating solitons saturate a gravitational version of the Bogomol'nyi bound on the energy of an arbitrary field configuration.Comment: 39 pages, DAMTP R-93/27, phyzz

Solitons in supersymmetric sigma-models with torsion

We derive a bound on the energy of the general (p,q)-supersymmetric two-dimensional massive sigma model with torsion, in terms of the topological and Noether charges that appear as central charges in its supersymmetry algebra.The bound is saturated by soliton solutions of first-order Bogomol'nyi-type equations. This generalizes results obtained previously for p=q models without torsion. We give examples of massive (1,1) models with torsion that have a group manifold as a target space. We show that they generically have multiple vacua and find an explicit soliton solution of an SU(2) model. We also construct a new class of zero torsion massive (4,4) models with multiple vacua and soliton solutions. In addition, we compute the metrics on the one-soliton moduli spaces for those cases for which soliton solutions are known explicitly, and discuss their interpretation.Comment: Phyzzx.tex, 30 pages, no figure

Domain Walls from Anti-de Sitter Spacetime

We examine $(D-2)$-brane solutions in supergravities, showing that they fall into four categories depending on the details of the dilaton coupling. In general they describe domain walls, although in one of the four categories the metric describes anti-de Sitter spacetime. We study this case, and its $S^1$ dimensional reduction to a more conventional domain wall in detail, focussing in particular on the manner in which the unbroken supersymmetry of the anti-de Sitter solution is partially broken by the dimensional reduction to the domain wall.Comment: Latex, 13 pages, no figures, introduction revised and references adde

Dyonic p-branes from self-dual (p+1)-branes

The `electromagnetic' Sl(2;\bZ) duality group in spacetime dimension $D=4k$ can be given a Kaluza-Klein interpretation in $D=4k+2$ as the modular group of a compactifying torus. We show how dyonic $2(k-1)$-branes in $D=4k$ can be interpreted as self-dual $(2k-1)$-branes in $D=4k+2$ wound around the homology cycles of the torus. In particular, dyons of the D=4 N=4 heterotic string theory are interpreted as winding modes of a D=6 self-dual string, while D=8 dyonic membranes are interpreted as wound 3-branes of D=10 IIB superstring theory. We also discuss the T-dual IIA interpretations of D=8 dyonic membranes.Comment: 16 pp. phyzzx. 1 fi