Supergravity One Variable Solutions

Abstract

The thesis deals mainly with one-parameter families of exact solutions for gravitational theories coupled to Maxwell and scalar fields with various signatures. We first obtain four families of metrics for a generic D-dimensional gravity theory coupled to scalars and Maxwell fields. The spacetime metrics of these families are all expressed in terms of a single function and constrained matrices. As an application, we consider four families of solutions of the general N = 2, D = 4 supergravity theories coupled to vector multiplets, where the function in the metric can be fixed from the knowledge of the geometry of the scalar fields which is governed by special geometry in the case of N = 2 supergravity. Also, solutions of supergravity theories where the scalar fields parametrize the coset spaces SL(N,R)/SO(N,R) are considered for N =8, 6 and 5, corresponding to D = 4, 5 and 7.