Extremal black holes as bound states

Abstract We consider a simple static extremal multi-black hole solution with constituents charged under different U(1) fields. Each of the constituents by itself is an extremal dilatonic black hole of coupling a = 3 . For a special case with two electrically and two magnetically charged black holes the multi-black hole solution interpolates between the familiar a = 3 , 1, 1 3 and 0 solutions, depending on how many black holes are placed at infinity. This proves the hypothesis that black holes with the above dilaton couplings arise in string theory as bound states of fundamental a = 3 states with zero binding energy. We also generalize the result to states where the action does not admit a single scalar truncation and show that a wide class of dyonic black holes in toroidally compactified string theory can be viewed as bound states of fundamental a = 3 black holes.