English

Axionic Band Structure of the Cosmological Constant

High Energy Physics - Theory 2016-02-03 v1

Abstract

We argue that theories with multiple axions generically contain a large number of vacua that can account for the smallness of the cosmological constant. In a theory with N axions, the dominant instantons with charges Q determine the discrete symmetry of vacua. Subleading instantons break the leading periodicity and lift the vacuum degeneracy. For generic integer charges the number of distinct vacua is given by |det(Q)|~exp(N). Our construction motivates the existence of a landscape with a vast number of vacua in a large class of four-dimensional effective theories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1510.06388,
  title  = {Axionic Band Structure of the Cosmological Constant},
  author = {Thomas C. Bachlechner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.06388},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

5 pages, 1 figure