Related papers: On Isolated Vacua and Background Independence
We observe that the existence of black holes limits the extent to which M Theory (or indeed any quantum theory of gravity) can be described by conventional quantum mechanics. Although there is no contradiction with the fundamental…
We explore the stability of domain wall and bubble solutions in theories with compact extra dimensions. The energy density stored inside of the wall can destabilize the volume modulus of a compactification, leading to solutions containing…
The role of complex quantities in quantum theory has been puzzling physicists since the beginnings. It is thus natural to ask whether, in order to describe our experiments, the mathematical structure of complex Hilbert spaces it is built on…
We compute the masses of all moduli in the unstable deSitter vacua arising in the toy model of cosmological M-theory flux compactifications on the G2 holonomy manifolds of [1]. The slow-roll parameters in the tachyonic directions are shown…
It is widely expected that generic black holes have a non-empty but weakly singular Cauchy horizon, due to mass inflation. Indeed this has been proven by the author in the spherical collapse of a charged scalar field, under decay…
We show that various disconnected components of the moduli space of superstring vacua with 16 supercharges admit a rationale in terms of BPS un-orientifolds, i.e. type I toroidal compactifications with constant non-vanishing but quantized…
A general formulation of the basic conflict of the information problem is given, encapsulated in a "black hole theorem." This is framed in a more general context than the usual one of quantum field theory on a background, and is based on…
Static, spherically symmetric, traversable wormhole solutions with electric or magnetic charges are shown to exist in general relativity in the presence of scalar fields nonminimally coupled to gravity. These wormholes, however, turn out to…
We present the study of type II A flux vacua and their M-theory duals for compactification on a class of Calabi-Yau orientifolds. The Kaehler potential is derived from toroidal compactifications and the superpotential contains a…
We perform a complete classification of the flux-induced 12d algebras compatible with the set of N=1 type II orientifold models that are T-duality invariant, and allowed by the symmetries of the T^6/(Z_2 x Z_2) isotropic orbifold. The…
We classified and studied the charged black hole and wormhole solutions in the Einstein--Maxwell system in the presence of a massless, real scalar field. The possible existence of charged black holes in general scalar--tensor theories was…
We address the possibility of false vacuum decay in $N=1$ supergravity theories, including those corresponding to superstring vacua. By establishing a Bogomol'nyi bound for the energy density stored in the domain wall of the $O(4)$…
We analyse higher order background independence conditions arising from multiple commutators of background deformations in quantum closed string field theory. The conditions are shown to amount to a vanishing theorem for $\Delta_S$…
We study tunneling between vacua in multi-dimensional field spaces. Working in the strict thin wall approximation, we find that the conventional instantons for false vacuum decay develop a new vanishing eigenvalue in their fluctuation…
The idealized theory of quantum vacuum energy density is a beautiful application of the spectral theory of differential operators with boundary conditions, but its conclusions are physically unacceptable. A more plausible model of a…
We describe how 4d de Sitter vacua might emerge from 11d heterotic M-theory. Non-perturbative effects and $G$-fluxes play a crucial role leading to vacua with F-term supersymmetry breaking and a positive energy density. Charged scalar…
The species scale $\Lambda_s\leq M_{pl}$ serves as a UV cutoff in the gravitational sector of an EFT and can depend on the moduli of the theory as the spectrum of the theory varies. We argue that the dependence of the species scale…
The distance conjecture claims that as the modulus traverses along the trans-Planckian geodesic distance, the effective field theory becomes invalid by a descent of a tower of states from UV. Moreover, according to the recent emergence…
Let $X$ be a max-stable random vector with positive continuous density. It is proved that the conditional independence of any collection of disjoint sub-vectors of $X$ given the remaining components implies their joint independence. We…
In this work we shall obtain sufficient conditions for the appearance of singularities in gravitational theories which propagate an extra vector degree of freedom, based on the known relaxations of the singularity theorems. We study the…