Aether, Dark Energy, and String Compactifications
Abstract
The 19th century Aether died with Special Relativity but was resurrected by General Relativity in the form of dark energy; a tensile material with tension equal to its energy density. Such a material is provided by the D-branes of string-theory; these can support the fields of supersymmetric particle-physics, although their energy density is cancelled by orientifold singularities upon compactification. Dark energy can still arise from supersymmetry-breaking anti-D-branes but it is probably time-dependent. Recent results on time-dependent compactifications to an FLRW universe with late-time accelerated expansion are reviewed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2108.07536,
title = {Aether, Dark Energy, and String Compactifications},
author = {Paul K. Townsend},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.07536},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
12 pp. Journal format. Contribution to the special edition of the Philosophical Transactions A of the Royal Society focused on "The future of mathematical cosmology"