Black Holes in Supergravity

Black holes are widely considered to be the most important objects for studying quantum gravity. In the context of string theory, which is the most promising approach to quantum gravity, they have been a key area of study. String theory has provided significant insights into the physics of black holes. Following Hawking's discovery that black holes are thermodynamical objects, which have an associated entropy, a derivation of the entropy of certain types of black holes has been constructed, using techniques in string theory. The study of black holes in string theory is a very active field of research, and there remains much to be understood. I propose to systematically investigate properties of black hole solutions of supergravity theories. Supergravity theories are extensions of Einstein's gravity, and can be used to describe the low energy limit of string theory. Supersymmetric solutions of these theories possess Killing spinors. The existence of Killing spinors imposes constraints on the geometry of the solution, such as additional symmetries, which enable them to be classified. Supersymmetry has also been particularly important in generating new and interesting solutions, including new black holes. I have previously worked on a number of projects classifying five-dimensional supersymmetric black holes, and finding new solutions. Higher dimensional black holes are particularly interesting because the uniqueness theorems, originally formulated in four dimensions, break down in higher dimensions. For example, in five dimensions there is a black ring solution, which has an annular event horizon, in contrast to the five dimensional black hole which has a spherical event horizon. At present, relatively little is known about the generic structure of black hole solutions in ten and eleven dimensional supergravity, and it is expected that there will be many examples of interesting black objects in these theories, with novel event horizon structures. I have recently...