Aether, Dark Energy, and String Compactifications

Abstract

The 19th century Aether died with Special Relativity but was resurrected by General Relativity in the form of dark energy; a tensile material with tension equal to its energy density. Such a material is provided by the D-branes of string-theory; these can support the fields of supersymmetric particle-physics, although their energy density is cancelled by orientifold singularities upon compactification. Dark energy can still arise from supersymmetry-breaking anti-D-branes but it is probably time-dependent. Recent results on time-dependent compactifications to an FLRW universe with late-time accelerated expansion are reviewed.

12 pp. Journal format. Contribution to the special edition of the Philosophical Transactions A of the Royal Society focused on "The future of mathematical cosmology"

References in corpus (5)

• Four-dimensional String Compactifications with D-Branes, Orientifolds and Fluxes
• The Swampland: Introduction and Review
• Cosmology as Geodesic Motion
• Recurrent Acceleration in Dilaton-Axion Cosmology
• Braneworld localisation in hyperbolic spacetime

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Scalar Product for a Version of Minisuperspace Model with Grassmann Variables