Black hole Berry phase.
Supersymmetric black holes are characterized by a large number of degenerate ground states. We argue that these black holes, like other quantum mechanical systems with such a degeneracy, are subject to a phenomenon which is called the geometric or Berry's phase: under adiabatic variations of the background values of the supergravity moduli, the quantum microstates of the black hole mix among themselves. We present a simple example where this mixing is exactly computable, that of small supersymmetric black holes in 5 dimensions.
de Boer
Jan
J
Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Amsterdam, 1018 XE Amsterdam, The Netherlands. J.deBoer@uva.nl
Papadodimas
Kyriakos
K
Verlinde
Erik
E