Domain Walls, Black Holes, and Supersymmetric Quantum Mechanics

TL;DR

This paper explores how effective supersymmetric quantum mechanics can be used to understand BPS domain walls and black holes in supergravity theories with eight supercharges, providing insights into their vacua and solutions.

Contribution

It demonstrates how properties of supersymmetric quantum mechanics inform the physics of BPS solutions in supergravity, with examples involving scalar fields in symmetric coset spaces.

Findings

Effective quantum mechanics models BPS solutions in supergravity.

Properties of these models reveal details of supersymmetric vacua.

Examples illustrate scalar fields in symmetric coset spaces.

Abstract

Supersymmetric solutions, such as BPS domain walls or black holes, in four- and five-dimensional supergravity theories with eight supercharges can be described by effective quantum mechanics with a potential term. We show how properties of the latter theory can help us to learn about the physics of supersymmetric vacua and BPS solutions in these supergravity theories. The general approach is illustrated in a number of specific examples where scalar fields of matter multiplets take values in symmetric coset spaces.