Related papers: Life on moduli space?

Recent work has suggested a surprising new upper bound on the lifetime of de Sitter vacua in string theory. The bound is parametrically longer than the Hubble time but parametrically shorter than the recurrence time. We investigate whether…

We discuss the low-energy effective string theory when moduli of the compactified manifold are present. Assuming a nontrivial coupling of the moduli to the Maxwell tensor, we find a class of regular black hole solutions. Both the…

Many problems in physics, material sciences, chemistry and biology can be abstractly formulated as a system that navigates over a complex energy landscape of high or infinite dimensions. Well-known examples include phase transitions of…

The string-dominated universe locally resembles an open universe, and fits dynamical measures of power spectra, cluster abundances, redshift distortions, lensing constraints, luminosity and angular diameter distance relations and microwave…

We argue that the finiteness of quantum gravity amplitudes in fully compactified theories (at least in supersymmetric cases) leads to a bottom-up prediction for the existence of non-trivial dualities. In particular, finiteness requires the…

In this paper we analyze the structure of supersymmetric vacua in compactifications of the heterotic string on certain manifolds with SU(3) structure. We first study the effective theories obtained from compactifications on half-flat…

Based on the properties of probability distributions of functions of random variables, we proposed earlier a simple stringy mechanism that prefers the meta-stable vacua with a small cosmological constant \Lambda. As an illustration of this…

Identifying string theory vacua with desired physical properties at low energies requires searching through high-dimensional solution spaces - collectively referred to as the string landscape. We highlight that this search problem is…

We extend a recent scenario of Kachru, Kallosh, Linde and Trivedi to fix the string moduli fields by using a combination of fluxes and non-perturbative superpotentials, leading to de Sitter vacua. In our scenario the non-perturbative…

This is a review. Comments are welcome. The observation that the structure of string theory is rich enough to include the standard model in rough outline is an old one, starting with the early constructions of free field constructions,…

Geometric modularity has recently been conjectured to be a characteristic feature for flux vacua with $W=0$. This paper provides support for the conjecture by computing motivic modular forms in a direct way for several string…

In string theory with flux compactifications, anthropic selection for structure formation from a discretuum of vacuum energy values provides at present our only understanding of the tiny yet positive value of the cosmological constant. We…

Polygon spaces have been studied extensively, and yet missing from the literature is a simple property that every polygon has: dimension. This is distinct (possibly) from the dimension of the ambient space in which the polygon lives. A…

Modular invariance is a fundamental symmetry in string compactifications, constraining both the structure of the effective theory and the dynamics of moduli and matter fields. It has also gained renewed importance in the context of…

It has recently been conjectured that string theory does not admit de Sitter vacua, and that quintessence explains the current epoch of accelerated cosmic expansion. A proposed, key prediction of this scenario is time-varying couplings in…

We investigate the cosmological consequences of particle physics theories that admit stable loops of superconducting cosmic string - {\it vortons}. General symmetry breaking schemes are considered, in which strings are formed at one energy…

We discuss how, in a Universe restricted to the causal region connected to the observer, General Relativity implies the quantum nature of physical phenomena and directly leads to a string theory scenario, whose dynamics is ruled by a…

Vacuum structure and global cosmic strings are analyzed in the effective theory of self-interacting O(2) scalar fields on (3+1)-manifolds with conical singularities. In the context of one-loop effective action computed by heat-kernel…

We analyze the stability of the moduli at the quantum level in an open-string model realizing the $\mathcal{N}=2\to \mathcal{N}=0$ spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry in four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. In the region of moduli space…

The generic expectation in string/supergravity models is that there are multiple moduli fields with masses of the order of the supersymmetry breaking scale. We study the cosmology that arises as a result of vacuum misalignment of these…