Cobordism and Bubbles of Anything in the String Landscape

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hassfeld, Bjoern, Hebecker, Arthur, Walcher, Johannes
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Hassfeld, Bjoern
Hebecker, Arthur
Walcher, Johannes
author_facet Hassfeld, Bjoern
Hebecker, Arthur
Walcher, Johannes
contents We study bubble of nothing decays and their reverse processes, the creation of vacua through `bubbles of something', in models of the Universe based on string theory. From the four-dimensional perspective, the corresponding gravitational instantons contain an end-of-the-world (ETW) boundary or brane, realized by the internal manifold shrinking to zero size. The existence of such ETW branes is predicted by the Cobordism Conjecture. We develop the 4d EFT description of such boundaries at three levels: First, by generalizing the Witten bubble through an additional defect. Second, by replacing the compact $S^1$ with a Calabi-Yau orientifold and allowing it to shrink and disappear through a postulated defect. Third, we describe an ETW brane construction for type IIB Calabi-Yau orientifold compactifications with O3/O7 planes through an appropriate additional O5 orientifolding. Our 4d EFT formalism allows us to compute the decay/creation rates for bubbles of anything depending on two parameters: The size of the relevant defect and its tension a.k.a. the induced (generalized) deficit angle.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_06021
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cobordism and Bubbles of Anything in the String Landscape
Hassfeld, Bjoern
Hebecker, Arthur
Walcher, Johannes
High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
We study bubble of nothing decays and their reverse processes, the creation of vacua through `bubbles of something', in models of the Universe based on string theory. From the four-dimensional perspective, the corresponding gravitational instantons contain an end-of-the-world (ETW) boundary or brane, realized by the internal manifold shrinking to zero size. The existence of such ETW branes is predicted by the Cobordism Conjecture. We develop the 4d EFT description of such boundaries at three levels: First, by generalizing the Witten bubble through an additional defect. Second, by replacing the compact $S^1$ with a Calabi-Yau orientifold and allowing it to shrink and disappear through a postulated defect. Third, we describe an ETW brane construction for type IIB Calabi-Yau orientifold compactifications with O3/O7 planes through an appropriate additional O5 orientifolding. Our 4d EFT formalism allows us to compute the decay/creation rates for bubbles of anything depending on two parameters: The size of the relevant defect and its tension a.k.a. the induced (generalized) deficit angle.
title Cobordism and Bubbles of Anything in the String Landscape
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.06021