Related papers: On Isolated Vacua and Background Independence
We consider the classification of asymptotically flat, stationary, vacuum black hole spacetimes in four and five dimensions, that admit one and two commuting axial Killing fields respectively. It is well known that the Einstein equations…
We study the complete moduli space of vacua of 3d $\mathcal{N}=4$ $U(N)$ SQCD theories with $N_f$ fundamentals, building on the algebraic description of the Coulomb branch, and deduce the low energy physics in any vacuum from the local…
Symmetric vacua of heterotic M-theory, characterized by vanishing cohomology classes of individual sources in the three-form Bianchi identity, are analyzed on smooth Calabi-Yau three-folds. We show that such vacua do not exist for…
Lorentz-invariant expectation values for antisymmetric tensor field strengths in Calabi-Yau compactification of IIA string theory are considered. These are found to impart magnetic and/or electric charges to the dilaton hypermultiplet. This…
We give a simple argument suggesting that in a consistent quantum field theory tunneling from Minkowski to a lower energy vacuum must be impossible. Theories that allow for such a tunneling also allow for localized states of negative mass,…
We study moduli stabilization in the context of M-theory on compact manifolds with G2 holonomy, using superpotentials from flux and membrane instantons, and recent results for the Khaeler potential of such models. The existence of minima…
In recent years there has been some progress in the understanding of the global structure of stationary black hole space-times. In this paper we review some new results concerning the structure of stationary black hole space-times. In…
Marginally outer trapped surfaces are widely considered as the best quasi-local replacements for event horizons of black holes in General Relativity. However, this equivalence is far from being proved, even in stationary and static…
Intuitively speaking, a classical field theory is background-independent if the structure required to make sense of its equations is itself subject to dynamical evolution, rather than being imposed ab initio. The aim of this paper is to…
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…
It was recently argued that the swampland distance conjecture rules out dS vacua at parametrically large field distances. We point out that this conclusion can in principle be avoided in the presence of large fluxes that are not bounded by…
We recently described a protocol for computing the potential energy in heterotic M-theory for the dilaton, complex structure and K\"ahler moduli. This included the leading order non-perturbative contributions to the complex structure,…
We argue that the `island conjecture' and the replica wormhole derivation of the Page curve break monogamy of entanglement through allowing black hole interior states to be non-classically correlated while also pairwise entangled with…
It has been argued that orientifold vacua with fluxes in type IIA string theory can achieve moduli stabilisation and arbitrary decoupling between the AdS and KK scales upon sending certain unconstrained RR-flux quanta to infinity. In this…
We show how flux vacua that differ from each other in flux quanta can be seen as different vacua in a single scalar potential of an enlarged field space, which resolves the separation by thin domain walls. This observation, which is…
A free-theory vacuum state of an interacting field theory, e.g. quantum gravity, is unstable at tree level in general due to spontaneous emission of Fock-space particles in any spacetime with no global timelike Killing vectors, such as de…
We study the decay of the false vacuum in the regime where the quantum field theory analysis is not valid, since gravitational effects become important. This happens when the height of the barrier separating the false and the true vacuum is…
Just comparing with the scenario that the (3+1)-dimensional "real world" of the Calabi-Yau compactification has a tremendous landscape, we conjecture that a (4+1)-dimensional holographic theory may also hold a landscape of its vacua. Unlike…
We consider four dimensional quantum field theories which have a continuous manifold of inequivalent exact ground states -- a moduli space of vacua. Classically, the singular points on the moduli space are associated with extra massless…
What happens to a unified conscious field when its physical implementation straddles a black hole event horizon? This paper addresses that question for integration-based theories, including Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace…