We study special points in the moduli space of vacua at which supersymmetric electric solutions of the heterotic string theory become massless. We concentrate on configurations for which the supersymmetric nonrenormalization theorem is valid. These are ten-dimensional supersymmetric string waves and generalized fundamental strings with SO(8) holonomy group. From these we find the four-dimensional spherically symmetric configurations which saturate the BPS bound, in particular, near the points of the vanishing ADM mass. The nontrivial massless supersymmetric states in this class exist only in the presence of non-Abelian vector fields. We also find a new class of supersymmetric massive solutions, closely related to the massless ones. A distinctive property of all these objects, either massless or massive, is the existence of gravitational repulsion. They reflect all particles with nonvanishing mass and/or angular momentum, and therefore they can be called white holes (repulsons), in contrast with black holes which tend to absorb particles of all kinds. If such objects can exist we will have the first realization of the universal gravitational force which repels all particles with the strength proportional to their mass and therefore can be associated with antigravity. © 1995 The American Physical Society.

• Received 13 July 1995

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.52.7137