General brane geometries from scalar potentials: gauged supergravities and accelerating universes

We find broad classes of solutions to the field equations for d-dimensional gravity coupled to an antisymmetric tensor of arbitrary rank and a scalar field with non-vanishing potential. For an exponential potential we find solutions corresponding to brane geometries, generalizing the black p-branes and S-branes known for the case of vanishing potential. These geometries are singular at the origin with up to two horizons. When the singularity …