Black holes and Calabi-Yau threefolds

Abstract

We compute the microscopic entropy of certain 4 and 5 dimensional extermal black holes which arise for compactification of M-theory and type IIA on Calabi-Yau 3-folds. The results agree with macroscopic predictions, including some subleading terms. The macroscopic entropy in the 5 dimensional case predicts a surprising growth in the coho-mology of moduli space of holomorphic curves in Calabi-Yau threefolds which we verify in the case of elliptic threefolds.