Branes for Higgs phases and exact conformal field theories

We consider multicenter supergravity solutions corresponding to Higgs phasesof supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with Z_N symmetric vacua. In certainenergy regimes, we find a description in terms of a generalized wormholesolution that corresponds to the SL(2,R)/U(1) \times SU(2)/U(1) exact conformalfield theory. We show that U-dualities map these backgrounds to purelygravitational ones and comment on the relation to the black holes arising fromintersecting D1 and D5 branes. We also discuss supersymmetric properties of thevarious solutions and the relation to 2-dim solitons, on flat space, of thereduced axion-dilaton-gravity equations. Finally, we address the problem ofunderstanding other supergravity solutions from the multicenter ones. Asprototype examples we use rotating D3 branes and NS5 and D5 branes associatedto non-Abelian duals of 4-dim hyper-Kahler metrics with SO(3) isometry.Comment: 14 pages, latex; v2: a few typos corrected and a reference added. Version to appear in JHE