Dualities in five dimensions and charged string solutions Original Research Article

We consider an eleven dimensional supergravity compactified on K3 × T2 and show that the resulting five dimensional theory has identical massless states as that of a heterotic string compactified on a specific five torus T5. The strong-weak coupling duality of the five dimensional theory is argued to represent a ten dimensional Type IIA string compactified on K3 × S1, supporting the conjecture of string-string duality in six dimensions. In this perspective, we present a magnetically charged solution of the low energy heterotic string effective action in five dimensions with a charge defined on a three sphere S3 due to the two form potential. We use the Poincaré duality to replace the antisymmetric two form with a gauge field in the effective action and obtain a string solution with charge on a two sphere S2 instead of that on a three sphere S3 in the five dimensional spacetime. We note that the string-particle duality is accompanied by a change of topology from S3 to S2 and vice versa.