Related papers: On Isolated Vacua and Background Independence
It is shown that the models of white hole interacting with external matter can be made stable by introduction of a negative central mass. Similar results are obtained for the models of white hole, interacting with null shells, with radial…
We review recent results on the interplay between the five-dimensional space-time and the internal manifold in Calabi-Yau compactifications of M-theory. Black string, black hole and domain wall solutions as well as Kasner type cosmologies…
It is emphasized that compactified little string theories have compact moduli spaces of vacua, which globally probe compact string geometry. Compactifying various little string theories on T^3 leads to 3d theories with exact, quantum…
It is shown how monopoles and dyons decay on curves of marginal stability in the moduli space of vacua at weak coupling in pure N=2 gauge theory with arbitrary gauge group. The analysis involves a semi-classical treatment of the monopole…
This paper deals with a study of the effects that spherically symmetric first-order metric perturbations and vacuum quantum fluctuations have on the stability of the multiply connected de Sitter spacetime recently proposed by Gott and Li.…
We propose examples, which involve orbifolds by elements of the U-duality group, with M-theory moduli fixed at the eleven-dimensional Planck scale. We begin by reviewing asymmetric orbifold constructions in perturbative string theory, which…
While M- and F-theory compactifications describe a much larger class of vacua than perturbative string compactifications, they typically need singularities to generate non-abelian gauge fields and charged matter. The physical explanation…
Interacting massive spin-1 fields have been widely used in cosmology and particle physics. We obtain a new condition on the validity of the classical limit of these theories related to the non-trivial constraints that exist for vector field…
It is shown that the so-called $\alpha$-vacua which have been proposed as candidates for states of free quantum fields on de Sitter space have infinitely strong fluctuations for typical observables as averaged renormalized energy momentum…
We investigate the field dependence of the gauge couplings of $N=1$ string vacua from the point of view of the low energy effective quantum field theory. We find that field-theoretical considerations severely constrain the form of the…
We find de Sitter and flat space solutions with all moduli stabilized in four dimensional supergravity theories derived from the heterotic and type II string theories, and explain how all the previously known obstacles to finding such…
We show how non-trivial form fields can induce an effective potential for the dilaton and metric moduli in compactifications of type II string theory and M-theory. For particular configurations, the potential can have a stable minimum. In…
In this paper we generalize the black hole bound of arXiv:0706.2050 to de Sitter spaces, and apply it to various vacua in the landscape, with a special emphasis on slow-roll inflationary vacua. Non-trivial constraints on the lifetime and…
The spectrum of known black-hole solutions to the stationary Einstein equations has been steadily increasing, sometimes in unexpected ways. In particular, it has turned out that not all black-hole-equilibrium configurations are…
We present a novel strategy to systematically study complex-structure moduli stabilization in Type IIB and F-theory flux compactifications. In particular, we determine vacua in any asymptotic regime of the complex-structure moduli space by…
The space of degree d single-variable monic and centered complex polynomial vector fields can be decomposed into loci in which the vector fields have the same topological structure. We analyze the geometric structure of these loci and…
Not only in physical string theories, but also in some highly simplified situations, background independence has been difficult to understand. It is argued that the ``holomorphic anomaly'' of Bershadsky, Cecotti, Ooguri, and Vafa gives a…
We revisit the propagation of classical scalar fields in a spacetime which is asymptotically anti-de Sitter. The lack of global hyperbolicity of the underlying background gives rise to an ambiguity in the dynamical evolution of solutions of…
We propose a deformation principle of gauge theories in three dimensions that can describe topologically stable self-dual gauge fields, i.e., vacua configurations that in spite of their masses do not deform the background geometry and are…
It is shown that strongly coupled heterotic M-theory with anti-five-branes in the S^1/Z_2 bulk space can have meta-stable vacua which break N=1 supersymmetry and have a small, positive cosmological constant. This is demonstrated for the…