L. Andrianopoli¹ and R. D'Auria²

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, I-10129 Torino and
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) - Sezione di Torino, Italy
E-mail: [email protected]
² Dipartimento di Fisica, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, I-10129 Torino and
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) - Sezione di Torino, Italy
E-mail: [email protected]

Received: 19 February 2002 / Accepted: 6 March 2002 / Published: 10 March 2002

Abstract: We review some results on the connection among supergravity central charges, BPS states and Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. In particular, N = 2 super-gravity in four dimensions is studied in detail. For higher N supergravities we just give an account of the general theory specializing the discussion to the N = 8 case when one half of supersymmetry is preserved. We stress the fact that for extremal supergravity black holes the entropy formula is topological, that is the entropy turns out to be a moduli independent quantity and can be written in terms of invariants of the duality group of the supergravity theory.

Keywords: supergravity; black holes; BPS states; central charges.