Giant Leaps and Minimal Branes in Multi-Dimensional Flux Landscapes

Abstract

There is a standard story about decay in multi-dimensional flux landscapes: that from any state, the fastest decay is to take a small step, discharging one flux unit at a time; that fluxes with the same coupling constant are interchangeable; and that states with N units of a given flux have the same decay rate as those with -N. We show that this standard story is false. The fastest decay is a giant leap that discharges many different fluxes in unison; this decay is mediated by a 'minimal' brane that wraps the internal manifold and exhibits behavior not visible in the effective theory. We discuss the implications for the cosmological constant.

arXiv commentMinor updates to agree with published version. 9 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Quantization of Four-form Fluxes and Dynamical Neutralization of the Cosmological Constant
• Fluctuation Spectra of Tilted and Intersecting D-branes from the Born-Infeld Action
• Probabilities in the Bousso-Polchinski multiverse
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• Flux Compactifications on $(S_2{)}^N$
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• O(16)$\times$O(16) heterotic theory on $Ad{S}_3\times S^3\times T^4$
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