Related papers: A Finite Landscape?
Recent developments in string theory suggest that string theory landscape of vacua is vast. It is natural to ask if this landscape is as vast as allowed by consistent-looking effective field theories. We use universality ideas from string…
We discuss systematic approaches to the classification of string/M theory vacua, and physical questions this might help us resolve. To this end, we initiate the study of ensembles of effective Lagrangians, which can be used to precisely…
In this lecture I make some educated guesses, about the landscape of string theory vacua. Based on the recent work of a number of authors, it seems plausible that the lanscape is unimaginably large and diverse. Whether we like it or not,…
Motivated by recent discussions of the string-theory landscape, we propose field-theoretic realizations of models with large numbers of vacua. These models contain multiple U(1) gauge groups, and can be interpreted as deconstructed versions…
In this paper, we explore the string theory landscape obtained from type IIB and F-theory flux compactifications. We first give a comprehensive introduction to a number of mathematical finiteness theorems, indicate how they have been…
We derive formulas for counting certain classes of vacua in the string/M theory landscape. We do so in the context of the moduli space of M-theory compactifications on singular manifolds with G_2 holonomy. Particularly, we count the numbers…
We apply the techniques of the ``universal string theory'' to the ``manifold'' paradigm for superstring/M-theory and come up with a candidate manifold: the manifold of F-theory vacua, defined in conformal field theoretical terms. It…
We argue that the study of the statistics of the landscape of string vacua provides the first potentially predictive -- and also falsifiable -- framework for string theory. The question of whether the theory does or does not predict low…
This article is the author's PhD thesis. After a review of string vacua obtained through compactification (with and wothout fluxes), it presents and describes various aspects of the Landscape of string vacua. At first it gives an…
There is evidence that string theory possesses a large discretuum of stable and/or metastable ground states, with zero or four supersymmetries in four dimensions. I discuss critically the nature of this evidence. Assuming this "landscape"…
Recently, it has become clear that neighboring multiple vacua might have interesting consequences for the physics of the early universe. In this paper we investigate the topography of the string landscape corresponding to complex structure…
The recent progress in the understanding of the landscape of string theory vacua hints that the hierarchy problem might be the problem of a super-selection rule. The attractor mechanism gives a possibility to explain the choice of a vacuum.…
Progress in string theory has resulted in a whole landscape of vacua solutions.In this talk I describe a proposal for exploring the cosmological implications of the landscape, based on the dynamics of the wavefunction of the universe…
We review recent work in which compactifications of string and M theory are constructed in which all scalar fields (moduli) are massive, and supersymmetry is broken with a small positive cosmological constant, features needed to reproduce…
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…
It seems likely that string theory has a landscape of vacua that includes very many metastable de Sitter spaces. However, as emphasized by Banks, Dine and Gorbatov, no current framework exists for examining these metastable vacua in string…
We study the computational complexity of the physical problem of finding vacua of string theory which agree with data, such as the cosmological constant, and show that such problems are typically NP hard. In particular, we prove that in the…
We discuss different formulations and approaches to string theory and $ 2d$ quantum gravity. The generic idea to get a unique description of {\it many} different string vacua altogether is demonstrated on the examples in $ 2d$ conformal,…
We solve the equation of motion of boundary string field theory allowing generic boundary operators quadratic in $X$, and explore string theory non-perturbative vacua with massive state condensation. Using numerical analysis, a large number…
In hep-th/0501082, a field theoretic ``toy model'' for the Landscape was proposed. We show that the considerations of that paper carry through to realistic effective Lagrangians, such as those that emerge out of string theory. Extracting…