Domain walls, black holes, and supersymmetric quantum mechanics

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 scal ar fields of matter multiplets take values in symmetric coset spaces. (C) 2 001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.