Topological Solitons and the Supergravity Path Integral

Supergravity theories in five spacetime dimensions admit solutions with non-trivial topology carrying energy, electric charge and angular momentum but having no event horizon, known as topological solitons. It is interesting to ask whether these solutions contribute as saddles to a grand-canonical partition function defined by the gravitational path integral with suitable boundary conditions. If so, when the solutions are asymptotically anti-de Sitter, one can also ask what is the saddle of the holographically dual four-dimensional conformal field theory that matches the topological soliton contribution. The thesis will investigate these questions, focusing on the supersymmetric case.