Solitons of axion-dilaton gravity.

We use soliton techniques of the two-dimensional reduced β-function equations to obtain non-trivial string backgrounds from flat space. These solutions are characterized by two integers (n,m) referring to the soliton numbers of the metric and axion-dilaton sectors respectively. We show that the NappiWitten universe associated with the SL(2) × SU(2)/SO(1, 1) × U(1) CFT coset arises as an (1, 1) soliton in this fashion for certain values of the moduli parameters, while for other values of the soliton moduli we arrive at the SL(2)/SO(1, 1)×SO(1, 1) background. Ordinary 4-dim black-holes arise as 2-dim (2, 0) solitons, while the Euclidean worm-hole background is described as a (0, 2) soliton on flat space. The soliton transformations correspond to specific elements of the string Geroch group. These could be used as starting point for exploring the role of U-dualities in string compactifications to two dimensions. CERN-TH/96-121 May 1996 e-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] Permanent address