Extremal black hole flows and duality

Abstract

Extremal black holes in extended supergravity theories can be obtained as solutions of first order flow equations even when they are not supersymmetric, provided one identifies a suitable superpotential W appearing in the effective potential, and driving the evolution of the scalar fields. W also gives the black hole horizon entropy and the ADM mass. We describe how classical U‐duality allows to determine W in many models and to classify both regular and singular solutions.