Related papers: Neutralizing Topological Obstructions to Bubbles o…

In this paper, we numerically study the impact heavy field degrees of freedom have on vacuum metastability in a toy model, with the aim of better understanding how the decoupling theorem extends to semiclassical processes. We observe that…

It is shown how metastable de Sitter vacua might arise from heterotic M-theory. The balancing of its two non-perturbative effects, open membrane instantons against gaugino condensation on the hidden boundary, which act with opposing forces…

We consider a static brane in the background of a topological black hole, in arbitrary dimensions. For hyperbolic horizons, we find a solution only when the black hole mass assumes its minimum negative value. In this case, the tension of…

We study a six-dimensional braneworld model with infinite warped extra dimensions in the case where the four-dimensional brane is described by a topological vortex of a U(1) symmetry-breaking Abelian Higgs model in presence of a negative…

We provide a methodology for decoupling the bulk gravitational field equations of braneworld black holes to suppress the bulk singularities. Thus, we provide a regular braneworld black hole setup. To achieve this, we apply a Minimal…

Coleman-de Luccia transitions are spontaneous processes of nucleation of bubbles within metastable gravitational vacua including in their interior a true stable vacuum. From the perspective of lower-dimensional gauged supergravities…

First-order phase transitions occur through the nucleation of critical bubbles of the stable phase within the metastable phase. Using holography, we present a fully microscopic description of these bubbles in a strongly coupled,…

We investigate the existence of dS vacua in supersymmetry-breaking Scherk-Schwarz toroidal compactifications of type II string theory, using the well-understood ingredients of curvature, fluxes and 1-loop Casimir energy. Starting from the…

We study a topological obstruction of a very stringy nature concerned with deforming the target space of an $N=2$ non-linear \sm. This target space has a singularity which may be smoothed away according to the conventional rules of geometry…

In this thesis we investigate some aspects of the dramatic consequences of supersymmetry breaking on string vacua. In particular, we focus on the issue of vacuum stability in ten-dimensional string models with broken, or without,…

We study aspects of obtaining field theories with noncommuting time-space coordinates as limits of open-string theories in constant electric-field backgrounds. We find that, within the standard closed-string backgrounds, there is an…

We consider type IIB flux compactifications on six-dimensional SU(2)-structure manifolds with O5- and O7-planes. These six-dimensional spaces allow not only for F_3 and H_3 fluxes but also for F_1 and F_5 fluxes. We derive the…

We propose a novel approach to the problem of cosmological perturbations in a braneworld model with induced gravity, which leads to a closed system of equations on the brane. We focus on a spatially closed brane that bounds the interior…

Motivated by a recent experiment [L.Chomaz et al., Nature Physics 14, 442 (2018)], we perform numerical simulations of a dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in a tubular confinement at T=0 within Density Functional Theory, where the…

Based on perturbation theory, we present the exact first-order solution to the Einstein equations for the exterior static gravitational field of an isolated non-rotating star in a spatially finite universe having the topology of a flat…

Using a confining potential, we consider spherically symmetric vacuum (static black hole) solutions in a brane-world scenario. Working with a constant curvature bulk, two interesting cases/solutions are studied. A Schwarzschild-de Sitter…

We look for ways to destabilise the vacuum. We describe how dense matter environments source a contribution to moduli potentials and analyse the conditions required to initiate either decompactification or a local shift in moduli vevs. We…

We investigate the non-perturbative stability of asymptotically anti-de Sitter gravity coupled to tachyonic scalar fields with mass near the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. Such scalars are characterized by power-law radial decay near the AdS…

We develop the concept of supersymmetry in singular spaces, apply it in an example for 3-branes in D=5 and comment on 8-branes in D=10. The new construction has an interpretation that the brane is a sink for the flux and requires adding to…

We explore the bubble spacetimes which can be obtained from double analytic continuations of static and rotating black holes in anti-de Sitter space. In particular, we find that rotating black holes with elliptic horizon lead to bubble…