A dS obstruction and its phenomenological consequences

Abstract

In this note we observe that positive runaway potentials can generically be stabilized by abelian $p$-form fluxes, leading to parametrically controlled de Sitter solutions after compactification to a lower dimension. When compactifying from 4d to 2d the dS solutions are metastable, whereas all higher dimensional cases are unstable. The existence of these dS solutions require that a certain inequality involving the derivatives of the potential and $p$-form gauge coupling is satisfied. This inequality is not satisfied in simple stringy examples (outside of the scope of Maldacena-Nuñez), which unsurprisingly avoid this route to dS solutions. We can apply our techniques to construct $d{S}_2$ solutions in the Standard Model plus an additional runaway scalar such as quintessence. Demanding that these are avoided leads to (weak) phenomenological constraints on the time variation of the fine structure constant and QCD axion-photon coupling.

arXiv comment19 pages + references v2: fixed typos, minor corrections

References in corpus (61)

• Dynamics of dark energy
• The Cosmological Constant and Dark Energy
• Cosmological Imprint of an Energy Component with General Equation of State
• de Sitter Vacua in String Theory
• On the Geometry of the String Landscape and the Swampland
• Quintessence and the Rest of the World
• Supergravity description of field theories on curved manifolds and a no go theorem
• The Swampland: Introduction and Review
• Distance and de Sitter Conjectures on the Swampland
• On the Cosmological Implications of the String Swampland
• Bounds on Slow Roll and the de Sitter Swampland
• De Sitter Space and the Swampland
• Supersymmetric, cold and lukewarm black holes in cosmological Einstein-Maxwell theory
• The Oklo bound on the time variation of the fine-structure constant revisited
• Planck 2015 results. XIV. Dark energy and modified gravity
• What if string theory has no de Sitter vacua?
• AdS and the Swampland
• On the de Sitter swampland criterion
• Inflationary Constraints on Type IIA String Theory
• Simple de Sitter Solutions
• Towards Classical de Sitter Solutions in String Theory
• De Sitter vs Quintessence in String Theory
• The dS swampland conjecture and the Higgs potential
• De Sitter hunting in a classical landscape
• The tension between 10D supergravity and dS uplifts
• On the Cosmology of Type IIA Compactifications on SU(3)-structure Manifolds
• Instanton Cosmology and Domain Walls from M-theory and String Theory
• Further refining the de Sitter swampland conjecture
• On Classical de Sitter Vacua in String Theory
• Constraining de Sitter Space in String Theory
• Asymptotic Flux Compactifications and the Swampland
• Festina Lente: EFT Constraints from Charged Black Hole Evaporation in de Sitter
• Quantum Horizons of the Standard Model Landscape
• Remarks on scale separation in flux vacua
• The String Landscape, the Swampland, and the Missing Corner
• The asymptotic dS Swampland Conjecture - a simplified derivation and a potential loophole
• Constraints on String Cosmology
• Bounds on Slow Roll at the Boundary of the Landscape
• Runaway Quintessence, Out of the Swampland
• On Classical Stability with Broken Supersymmetry
• Weak Gravity Conjecture, Multiple Point Principle and the Standard Model Landscape
• de Sitter extrema and the swampland
• On Cosmological Constants from alpha'-Corrections
• Open problems on classical de Sitter solutions
• Quantum Global Structure of de Sitter Space
• Charged Nariai Black Holes With a Dilaton
• Weakly Coupled de Sitter Vacua with Fluxes and the Swampland
• Proliferation of de Sitter Space
• Brane annihilation in non-supersymmetric strings
• On classical de Sitter solutions in higher dimensions
• The $F$-term Problem and other Challenges of Stringy Quintessence
• Gaugino Condensation and the Cosmological Constant
• Adventures in de Sitter space
• Large Field Inflation/Quintessence and the Refined Swampland Distance Conjecture
• No classical (anti-)de Sitter solutions with O8-planes
• Two dimensional Nearly de Sitter gravity
• Constraining the EW Hierarchy from the Weak Gravity Conjecture
• Standard Model Vacua for Two-dimensional Compactifications
• Stability and Spectrum of Compactifications on Product Manifolds
• The nonlinear evolution of de Sitter space instabilities
• Constraints and Horizons for de Sitter with Extra Dimensions

Cited by in corpus (10)

• The Price of Curiosity: Information Recovery in de Sitter Space
• The FL bound and its phenomenological implications
• de Sitter in non-supersymmetric string theories: no-go theorems and brane-worlds
• Quintessence and the Swampland: The numerically controlled regime of moduli space
• The unbearable lightness of charged gravitini
• Supersymmetry Breaking and Stability in String Vacua: brane dynamics, bubbles and the swampland
• Dilatonic (Anti-)de Sitter Black Holes and Weak Gravity Conjecture
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Swampland: The Cosmologist's Handbook to the string-theoretical Swampland Programme
• AdS Swampland Conjectures and Light Fermions
• Quadratic curvature corrections to stringy effective actions and the absence of de Sitter vacua