Related papers: Vacuum statistics and stability in axionic landsca…
The search for classically stable Type IIA de-Sitter vacua typically starts with an ansatz that gives Anti-de-Sitter supersymmetric vacua and then raises the cosmological constant by modifying the compactification. As one raises the…
We study the cosmology of complex multi-axion theories. With O(100) fields and GUT scale energies these theories contain a vast number of vacua, inflationary trajectories and a natural dark matter candidate. We demonstrate that the vacua…
We compute the quantum tunneling rate of dilute axion stars close to the maximum mass [P.H. Chavanis, Phys. Rev. D {\bf 84}, 043531 (2011)] using the theory of instantons. We confirm that the lifetime of metastable states is extremely long,…
We examine the descent via membrane nucleation through a landscape of vacua where the cosmological constant is given by a combination of four-form fluxes. It has been shown that this descent can be slowed exponentially for very low…
Following fresh attempts to resolve the problem of the energy density of the vacuum, we reconsider the case where the cosmological constant is derived from a higher-dimensional version of general relativity, and interpret the…
We review some basic flux vacua counting techniques and results, focusing on the distributions of properties over different regions of the landscape of string vacua and assessing the phenomenological implications. The topics we discuss…
In supersymmetric models with the run-away vacua or with the stable but non-supersymmetric ground state there exist stable field configurations (vacua) which restore one half of supersymmetry and are characterized by constant positive…
Various aspects of time-dependent processes are studied within the large N approximation of O(N) vector models in three dimensions. These include the rolling of fields, the tunneling and decay of vacua. We present an exact solution for the…
Density stratification in geophysical environments can be non-uniform, particularly in thermohaline staircases and atmospheric layer transitions. Non-uniform stratification, however, is often approximated by the average ambient density…
We investigate field dynamics and tunneling between metastable minima in a landscape of Type IIB flux compactifications, utilizing monodromies of the complex structure moduli space to continuously connect flux vacua. After describing the…
We provide a systematic framework for theories of multiple axions. We discover a novel type of "alignment" that renders even very complex theories analytically tractable. Theories with about 100 axions and random parameters have an…
We argue that in the context of string theory a large number N of connected degenerate vacua that mix will lead to a ground state with much lower energy, essentially because of the standard level repulsion of quantum theory for the…
We discuss minisuperspace models within the framework of varying physical constants theories including $\Lambda$-term. In particular, we consider the varying speed of light (VSL) theory and varying gravitational constant theory (VG) using…
Although quintessence cosmologies seem to explain the amount of cosmological constant today, the required conditions are severe. For example, an extremely slowly varying and light scalar field that rolls toward the vanishing vacuum energy…
The cosmological constant and the Higgs mass seem unnaturally small and anthropically selected. We show that both can be efficiently scanned in Quantum Field Theories with a large enough number of vacua controllable thanks to approximated…
Motivated by cosmological examples we study quantum field theoretical tunnelling from an initial state where the "classical field", i.e. the vacuum expectation value of the field operator is spatially homogeneous but performing a…
In this scenario, a generic meta-stable deSitter vacuum site in the cosmic landscape in string theory has a very short lifetime. Typically, the smaller is the vacuum energy of a meta-stable site, the longer is its lifetime. This view of the…
An expanding universe is not expected to have a static vacuum energy density. The so-called cosmological constant $\Lambda$ should be an approximation, certainly a good one for a fraction of a Hubble time, but it is most likely a temporary…
Quantifying stochastic processes is essential to understand many natural phenomena, particularly in biology, including cell-fate decision in developmental processes as well as genesis and progression of cancers. While various attempts have…
We consider the decay of vortices trapped in the false vacuum of a theory of scalar electrodynamics in 2+1 dimensions. The potential is inspired by models with intermediate symmetry breaking to a metastable vacuum that completely breaks a…