The Anthropic Landscape of String Theory

Abstract

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, this is the kind of behavior that gives credence to the Anthropic Principle. I discuss the theoretical and conceptual issues that arise in developing a cosmology based on the diversity of environments implicit in string theory.

21 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (4)

• The World as a Hologram
• Eternal Black Holes in AdS
• The Trouble with de Sitter Space
• Is There Really a de Sitter/CFT Duality

Cited by in corpus (377)

• Modified Gravity and Cosmology
• Axion Cosmology
• On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton
• Observational Probes of Cosmic Acceleration
• Towards Inflation in String Theory
• Beyond the Cosmological Standard Model
• Challenges for $\Lambda$CDM: An update
• Four-dimensional String Compactifications with D-Branes, Orientifolds and Fluxes
• Universality Class in Conformal Inflation
• Aspects of Split Supersymmetry
• Inflationary Cosmology
• Approaches to Understanding Cosmic Acceleration
• Building a Better Racetrack
• Type IIA Moduli Stabilization
• Landscape, the Scale of SUSY Breaking, and Inflation
• Observational Consequences of a Landscape
• Cosmology and the S-matrix
• Dynamics of warped compactifications and the shape of the warped landscape
• Supersymmetric Standard Model Spectra from RCFT orientifolds
• Les Houches Lectures on Constructing String Vacua
• The Scaling of the No Scale Potential and de Sitter Model Building
• Bottom-Up Approach to Moduli Dynamics in Heavy Gravitino Scenario : Superpotential, Soft Terms and Sparticle Mass Spectrum
• Inflationary paradigm after Planck 2013
• Sinks in the Landscape, Boltzmann Brains, and the Cosmological Constant Problem
• Building MSSM Flux Vacua
• Holographic probabilities in eternal inflation
• Landscape of superconducting membranes
• de Sitter String Vacua from Kahler Uplifting
• Orientifolds, hypercharge embeddings and the Standard Model
• Flux Compactifications on Calabi-Yau Threefolds
• The Cosmological Constant and the String Landscape
• Compactifications of Heterotic Strings on Non-Kahler Complex Manifolds: II
• The Statistics of Supersymmetric D-brane Models
• The Universe from Scratch
• Computational complexity of the landscape I
• The dS swampland conjecture and the Higgs potential
• Loop Quantum Gravity: An Inside View
• The Multiverse Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
• Spread Supersymmetry with Wino LSP: Gluino and Dark Matter Signals
• Inflation, Cosmic Perturbations and Non-Gaussianities
• Correspondence between Holographic and Gauss-Bonnet dark energy models
• Generalized Flux Vacua
• Living Dangerously with Low-Energy Supersymmetry
• Moduli Stabilization in Type IIB Orientifolds (II)
• Models of Particle Physics from Type IIB String Theory and F-theory: A Review
• Towards de Sitter from 10D
• Gaugino Condensation and Nonperturbative Superpotentials in Flux Compactifications
• Statistics on the Heterotic Landscape: Gauge Groups and Cosmological Constants of Four-Dimensional Heterotic Strings
• Basic results in Vacuum Statistics
• Heterotic Moduli Stabilization with Fractional Chern-Simons Invariants
• Critical points and supersymmetric vacua
• The tension between 10D supergravity and dS uplifts
• A Holographic Framework for Eternal Inflation
• A Finely-Predicted Higgs Boson Mass from A Finely-Tuned Weak Scale
• When Worlds Collide
• Escher in the Sky
• Universal Limits on Massless High-Spin Particles
• The fate of four dimensions
• Supersymmetry Breaking in the Anthropic Landscape
• An Open String Landscape
• An Inflationary Model in String Theory
• A sufficient condition for de Sitter vacua in type IIB string theory
• String universality in ten dimensions
• Statistical analysis of the supersymmetry breaking scale
• Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time
• Life at the Interface of Particle Physics and String Theory
• Domain walls, near-BPS bubbles, and probabilities in the landscape
• A Framework for the Landscape
• A New Handle on de Sitter Compactifications
• Lectures on curved beta-gamma systems, pure spinors, and anomalies
• Efficient numerical solution to vacuum decay with many fields
• A Universe Without Weak Interactions
• Where in the String Landscape is Quintessence
• How far are we from the quantum theory of gravity?
• TASI/PiTP/ISS Lectures on Moduli and Microphysics
• Saltatory de Sitter String Vacua
• Charting the Landscape of Modified Gravity
• Towards a gauge invariant volume-weighted probability measure for eternal inflation
• Populating the Landscape: A Top Down Approach
• Reheating the Universe After Multi-Field Inflation
• Brane Partons and Singleton Strings
• Probabilities in the Bousso-Polchinski multiverse
• The Fall of Stringy de Sitter
• Branches of the Landscape
• Effects of theta on the deuteron binding energy and the triple-alpha process
• Evidence for the Multiverse in the Standard Model and Beyond
• Density Perturbations and the Cosmological Constant from Inflationary Landscapes
• How many universes are in the multiverse?
• Quantum Tunneling in Flux Compactifications
• Inflation after False Vacuum Decay: Observational Prospects after Planck
• Dark Energy in Practice
• Open inflation in the landscape
• Five lectures on effective field theory
• What can the observation of nonzero curvature tell us?
• Geometric Transitions, Flops and Non-Kahler Manifolds: II
• Anomalous muon magnetic moment, supersymmetry, naturalness, LHC search limits and the landscape
• Multibrane Inflation and Dynamical Flattening of the Inflaton Potential
• Topological constraints on stabilized flux vacua
• Dynamical compactification from de Sitter space
• 2004 TASI Lectures on Supersymmetry Breaking
• Liouville Cosmology at Zero and Finite Temperatures
• Closed String Tachyon Condensation and Worldsheet Inflation
• Multiverse Understanding of Cosmological Coincidences
• Holography of AdS vacuum bubbles
• Dark energy equation of state and anthropic selection
• Accelerating Universes and String Theory
• Supersymmetry versus Gauge Symmetry on the Heterotic Landscape
• Mapping an Island in the Landscape
• The power of Bayesian evidence in astronomy
• Census Taking in the Hat: FRW/CFT Duality
• Alpha-states in de Sitter space
• One Loop Predictions of the Finely Tuned SSM
• Hierarchically Split Supersymmetry with Fayet-Iliopoulos D-terms in String Theory
• Observational constraints on thawing quintessence models
• Probabilities in the landscape: The decay of nearly flat space
• Geometric constraints in dual F-theory and heterotic string compactifications
• Can we predict $\Lambda$ for the Non-SUSY sector of the Landscape ?
• Transitions Between de Sitter Minima
• Eternal Inflation, Bubble Collisions, and the Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory
• Eternal Inflation with alpha'-Corrections
• Consistent Compactification of Double Field Theory on Non-geometric Flux Backgrounds
• Landscape Cartography: A Coarse Survey of Gauge Group Rank and Stabilization of the Proton
• Cosmic bubble and domain wall instabilities III: The role of oscillons in three-dimensional bubble collisions
• Stationary Measure in the Multiverse
• Eternal observers and bubble abundances in the landscape
• Thin-shell bubbles and information loss problem in anti de Sitter background
• Catastrophic Production of Slow Gravitinos
• Punctuated eternal inflation via AdS/CFT
• Puzzles of Anthropic Reasoning Resolved Using Full Non-indexical Conditioning
• Low-l CMB Power Loss in String Inflation
• Hadronic signals of deconfinement at RHIC
• Small Field Polynomial Inflation: Reheating, Radiative Stability and Lower Bound
• Bounds for State Degeneracies in 2D Conformal Field Theory
• A Closer Look at Gaugino Masses in Pure Gravity Mediation Model/Minimal Split SUSY Model
• Entanglement negativity in the multiverse
• Chiral Fermions and the Standard Model from the Matrix Model Compactified on a Torus
• Quark and lepton masses and mixing in the landscape
• Transdimensional Tunneling in the Multiverse
• Polarizing Bubble Collisions
• Decay of de Sitter vacua by thermal activation
• Split Supersymmetry from Anomalous U(1)
• Rapid Tunneling and Percolation in the Landscape
• Surveying Standard Model Flux Vacua on $T^6/Z_2\times Z_2$
• The false vacuum bubble nucleation due to a nonminimally coupled scalar field
• Dynamics of false vacuum bubbles: beyond the thin shell approximation
• Stretched horizons, quasiparticles and quasinormal modes
• Cosmic Acceleration and the String Coupling
• TASI Lectures: Particle Physics from Perturbative and Non-perturbative Effects in D-braneworlds
• Likely values of the Higgs vev
• Cosmological Moduli Dynamics
• TASI lectures on complex structures
• A Calculable Toy Model of the Landscape
• Asymptotic Symmetries in de Sitter and Inflationary Spacetimes
• An Effective Description of the Landscape - I
• A volume-weighted measure for eternal inflation
• Why the Universe Started from a Low Entropy State
• Fighting the Floating Correlations: Expectations and Complications in Extracting Statistical Correlations from the String Theory Landscape
• Relaxing the Higgs mass and its vacuum energy by living at the top of the potential
• Random Potentials and Cosmological Attractors
• Multi-field open inflation model and multi-field dynamics in tunneling
• Eternal Inflation, past and future
• Calabi-Yau Duals of Torus Orientifolds
• The Static Quantum Multiverse
• The Landscape "avant la lettre"
• Random Polynomials and the Friendly Landscape
• Dynamics of M-theory vacua
• Analyzing Cosmic Bubble Collisions
• The no-boundary measure in string theory: Applications to moduli stabilization, flux compactification, and cosmic landscape
• Hunting super-heavy dark matter with ultra-high energy photons
• Multiverses and Cosmology: Philosophical Issues
• Undulant Universe
• D-Sitter Space: Causal Structure, Thermodynamics, and Entropy
• Building Supergravity Quintessence Model
• A perspective on the landscape problem
• Torsion in string-inspired cosmologies and the universe dark sector
• A Weak Gravity Conjecture for Scalar Field Theories
• The Cosmological Constant Problem, an Inspiration for New Physics
• Dark Energy and the MSSM
• A Conformal Field Theory for Eternal Inflation
• Gravitational Waves as a Probe of the Gravitino Mass
• Scrambling and decoding the charged quantum information
• Inflation from Flux Cascades
• The Higgsino-Singlino World at the Large Hadron Collider
• Past incompleteness of a bouncing multiverse
• Predictions of the causal entropic principle for environmental conditions of the universe
• Moduli Stabilisation and the Holographic Swampland
• Sasakian Geometry, Holonomy, and Supersymmetry
• Naturalness versus stringy naturalness (with implications for collider and dark matter searches)
• Conifolds and Tunneling in the String Landscape
• On cosmic natural selection
• Decay of flux vacua to nothing
• Multi-Field Inflation on the Landscape
• Asymmetric Gepner Models (Revisited)
• Warped Strings: Self-dual Flux and Contemporary Compactifications
• On Bouncing Brane-Worlds, S-branes and Branonium Cosmology
• Accessibility Measure for Eternal Inflation: Dynamical Criticality and Higgs Metastability
• The Internal and External Problems of String Theory - A Philosophical View
• Asymmetric Gepner Models II. Heterotic Weight Lifting
• Oscillating Fubini instantons in curved space
• Negative vacuum energy densities and the causal diamond measure
• Taming the Runaway Problem of Inflationary Landscapes
• Revealing systematics in phenomenologically viable flux vacua with reinforcement learning
• The Census Taker's Hat
• Blueprints of the No-Scale Multiverse at the LHC
• Seeing through the String Landscape - a String Hunter's Companion in Particle Physics and Cosmology
• The Standard Cosmological Model
• Complex/Symplectic Mirrors
• A string landscape guide to soft SUSY breaking terms
• Probabilities in the landscape
• Large Field Polynomial Inflation: Parameter Space, Predictions and (Double) Eternal Nature
• A Curvature Principle for the interaction between universes
• Vacuum decay in an interacting multiverse
• Direct anthropic bound on the weak scale from supernovae explosions
• An anisotropic universe due to dimension-changing vacuum decay
• Scientific alternatives to the anthropic principle
• Grand Unification in the Heterotic Brane World
• Stochastic inflation with an extremely large number of $e$-folds
• Gauge sector statistics of intersecting D-brane models
• Stabilization of Compactification Volume In a Noncommutative Mini-Super-Phase-Space
• Correlation Classes on the Landscape: To What Extent is String Theory Predictive?
• More Exact Tunneling Solutions in Scalar Field Theory
• The Scale of Inflation in the Landscape
• The Cosmological Constant in the Quantum Multiverse
• Observational constraints on dark energy cosmological model parameters
• The cosmological moduli problem and naturalness
• The F-Landscape: Dynamically Determining the Multiverse
• Tunneling and propagation of vacuum bubbles on dynamical backgrounds
• The Overshoot Problem in Inflation after Tunneling
• Hessian eigenvalue distribution in a random Gaussian landscape
• Environmentally Selected WIMP Dark Matter with High-Scale Supersymmetry Breaking
• Eternal Inflation, Global Time Cutoff Measures, and a Probability Paradox
• A Seesaw Mechanism in the Higgs Sector
• MSSM GUT String Vacua, Split Supersymmetry and Fluxes
• Is Noncommutative Eternal Inflation Possible?
• Inherent Holography In Fuzzy Spaces and An N-tropic Approach To The Cosmological Constant Problem
• A Fly in the SOUP
• An Entropy-Weighted Sum over Non-Perturbative Vacua
• A Renormalization Group Approach to the Cosmological Constant Problem
• Local random potentials of high differentiability to model the Landscape
• Fractal-Flows and Time's Arrow
• Oscillating instantons as homogeneous tunneling channels
• Chiral Generations on Intersecting 5-branes in Heterotic String Theory
• The adventures of Spacetime
• Observational Constraints on Undulant Cosmologies
• The fine-tuning problems of particle physics and anthropic mechanisms
• Geometric Transitions on non-Kaehler Manifolds
• Time before Time - Classifications of universes in contemporary cosmology, and how to avoid the antinomy of the beginning and eternity of the world
• A signature of anisotropic bubble collisions
• Brane compactifications and 4-dimensional geometry in the IKKT model
• A Smooth Landscape: Ending Saddle Point Inflation Requires Features to be Shallow
• Vacua and correlators in hyperbolic de Sitter space
• Higgs Boson Mass From Orbifold GUTs
• Probing the Dark Dimension with Auger data
• Reheating-volume measure in the landscape
• Asymptotic states of the bounce geometry
• Anthropic prediction for a large multi-jump landscape
• D-brane realizations of runaway behavior and moduli stabilization
• Holographic de Sitter Universe
• TASI Lectures on Cosmic Acceleration
• Why trust a theory? Some further remarks (part 1)
• Holomorphic Couplings In Non-Perturbative String Compactifications
• Backreaction of Localised Sources in String Compactifications
• Type IIA orientifolds and orbifolds on non-factorizable tori
• Initial Conditions for Bubble Universes
• Towards a High Energy Theory for the Higgs Phase of Gravity
• A Heterotic Flux Background and Calibrated Five-Branes
• Landscape Higgs and sparticle mass predictions from a logarithmic soft term distribution
• The CMB and the measure of the multiverse
• Dynamical Higgs potentials with a landscape
• Is there supercurvature mode of massive vector field in open inflation?
• The many symmetries of Calabi-Yau compactifications
• Conceptual Challenges on the Road to the Multiverse
• Non-Abelian Magnetized Blackholes and Unstable Attractors
• Tensor modes on the string theory landscape
• The Three Dimensional Dual of 4D Chirality
• Instantons and Extreme Value Statistics of Random Matrices
• The quark-gluon plasma, turbulence, and quantum mechanics
• The Arrow Of Time In The Landscape
• Aspects of Twistor Geometry and Supersymmetric Field Theories within Superstring Theory
• Note on initial conditions for small-field inflation
• Why did the Universe Start from a Low Entropy State?
• Limits on Entanglement Effects in the String Landscape from Planck and BICEP/Keck Data
• Constraining scalar field dark energy with cosmological observations
• A New Inflation Model with Anomaly-mediated Supersymmetry Breaking
• Dynamical systems of eternal inflation: A possible solution to the problems of entropy, measure, observables and initial conditions
• Applications of an exact counting formula in the Bousso-Polchinski Landscape
• Supermassive gravitinos, dark matter, leptogenesis and flat direction baryogenesis
• Catalytic Creation of Bubble Universe Induced by Quintessence in Five Dimensions
• The "Crisis in Fundamental Physics" - Will the LHC Pomeron End it?
• Dynamical Cobordisms in General Relativity and String Theory
• Duality-Symmetric Approach to General Relativity and Supergravity
• Drawing conformal diagrams for a fractal landscape
• Towards a non-anthropic solution to the cosmological constant problem
• The weak anthropic principle and the landscape of string theory
• Naturalness and the Landscape
• Brane cosmology in the Horava-Witten heterotic M-Theory on $S^1/Z_2$
• Numerical Analysis of Coleman-de Luccia Tunneling
• Revisiting constraints on uplifts to de Sitter vacua
• Initial Conditions of Inhomogeneous Universe and the Cosmological Constant Problem
• Exploring a simple sector of the Einstein-Maxwell landscape
• Gauged Supergravities and the Physics of Extra Dimensions
• The grainy multiverse
• Predictive Supersymmetry from Criticality
• Many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory and mesoscopic anthropic principle
• On the quantitative calculation of the cosmological constant of the quantum vacuum
• Cosmic Natural Selection
• Cosmological Formation of (2+1)-Dimensional Soliton Structures in Models Possessing Potentials with Local Peaks
• A geometric-probabilistic method for counting low-lying states in the Bousso-Polchinski Landscape
• Phase Transition in a Random Minima Model: Mean Field Theory and Exact Solution on the Bethe Lattice
• Statistics in the Landscape of Intersecting Brane Models
• Riding Gravity Away from Doomsday
• Radiative constraints on brane quintessence
• No-Scale Multiverse Blueprints at the LHC
• Retroduction, Multiverse Hypotheses and Their Testability
• Axions in Cold Dark Matter and Inflation Models
• Gravity and strings
• Compactification driven Hilltop Inflation in Einstein-Yang-Mills
• Stability in and of de Sitter space
• Hierarchy from Baryogenesis
• Physics Beyond the Multiverse - Naturalness and the Quest for a Fundamental Theory
• Lectures on Naturalness, String Landscape and Multiverse
• Warped String Compactification via Singular Calabi-Yau Conformal Field Theory
• New Inflation in the Landscape and Typicality of the Observed Cosmic Perturbation
• Topological Data Analysis for the String Landscape
• Canonical Gauge Coupling Unification in the Standard Model with High-Scale Supersymmetry Breaking
• New Non-Trivial Vacuum Structures in Supersymmetric Field Theories
• Quantum Bias Cosmology: Acceleration from Holographic Information Capacity
• Matter and Gravity in Warped Extradimensional Models: Reinterpreting Randall-Sundrum
• Seeking a Game in which the standard model Group shall Win
• Localization on the Landscape and Eternal Inflation
• Investigating the Stability of a Nonsupersymmetric Landscape
• Counting states in the Bousso-Polchinski Landscape
• Gravitation and tunnelling: Subtleties of the thin-wall approximation and rapid decays
• Non-linearities in the quantum multiverse
• Gauguin's questions in particle physics: Where are we coming from? What are we? Where are we going?
• Quantum Mechanics, Gravity, and the Multiverse
• Smooth Cosmologies from M-theory
• High Performance Algorithms for Quantum Gravity and Cosmology
• A fluid of black holes at the beginning of the Universe
• Does Cosmological Evolution Select for Technology?
• A Cyclic Cosmological Model in the Landscape Scenario
• Instanton Solution in Tachyon Cosmology
• Precision Cosmology and the Landscape
• The Spirit of Unification: The Wei of Physics
• A New Perspective to Cosmic Evolution and Vacuum Selection on a Superspace
• Memory in the system: trajectory-environment
• Soft supersymmetry breaking with tiny cosmological constant in flux compactified N=1 Supergravity
• Fuzzy instantons in landscape and swampland: review of the Hartle-Hawking wave function and several applications
• In-in formalism on tunneling background: multi-dimensional quantum mechanics
• We must know. We will know
• Dark Energy in String Theory
• A biotic cosmos demystified?
• Living Near de Sitter Bubble Walls
• A toy model for the coincidence problem
• Counting String Vacua
• The gravitational dynamics of warped throats
• A Toy Model For Single Field Open Inflation
• $p$-Branes with $Ad{S}_{p+1}$ vacuum as models of $R^2$ gravity
• Spin beyond Standard Model: Theory
• The limits of cosmology
• The Observer Class Hypothesis
• Question for SU(5) x SU(5) string unification
• Creation of a Toy Universe
• Breathing Vacuum Bubbles in Five-Dimensional Gauss-Bonnet Gravity
• A Computational Anthropic Principle: Where is the Hardest Problem in the Multiverse?
• Heuristic rule for constructing physics axiomatization
• A cyclic universe with colour fields
• Testing eternal inflation with the kinetic Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect
• Manifestations of String Theory in Astrophysical Data and at the LHC
• The Emperor's Last Clothes?
• Quantum Quintom Cosmology
• Primordial Fluctuations in String Cosmology
• Some Aspects of String Cosmology and the LHC
• PhD Thesis: String theory in the early universe
• Exploring Landscape, renormgroup quantization
• Coleman de Luccia geometry reconsidered and ADS/CFT
• A democratic Cosmos?