DUALITY AND ASYMPTOTIC GEOMETRIES

We consider a series of duality transformations that leads to a consta nt shift in the harmonic functions appearing in the description of a c onfiguration of branes. This way, for several intersections of branes, we can relate the original brane configuration which is asymptoticall y flat to a geometry of the type ad S-k X E-l X S-m. The implications of our results for supersymmetry enhancement, M(atrix) theory at finit e N, and for supergravity theories in diverse dimensions are discussed . (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.