Dual heterotic black holes in four and two dimensions

We consider a class of extremal and non-extremal four-dimensional black hole solutions occuring in toroidally compactified heterotic string theory, whose ten-dimensional interpretation involves a Kaluza-Klein monopole and a five-brane. We show that these four-dimensional solutions can be connected to extremal and non-extremal two-dimensional heterotic black hole solutions through a change in the asymptotic behaviour of the harmonic functions associated with the Kaluza-Klein monopole and with the five-brane. This change in the asymptotic behaviour can be achieved by a sequence of S and T-S-T duality transformations in four dimensions. These transformations are implemented by performing a reduction on a two-torus with Lorentzian signature. We argue that the same mechanism can be applied to extremal and non-extremal black hole solutions in the FHSV model. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. ALL rights reserved.