Small Vacuum Energy and Tunneling in a Modified Bousso-Polchinski Model
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866913096910503936 |
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| author | Halverson, James Khoury, Justin Long, Cody |
| author_facet | Halverson, James Khoury, Justin Long, Cody |
| contents | We propose a simplified model for the cosmological constant in string theory flux vacua motivated by type IIB and F-theory compactifications. Relative to the Bousso-Polchinski model, small vacuum energy spacing occurs in thin wafers rather than thin shells. The model is applied to the entire Schöller-Skarke database of Calabi-Yau fourfolds, which exhibit $532,600,483$ distinct sets of Hodge numbers. The overwhelming majority of those ($99.95\%$ percent for some choices of parameters) exhibit a vacuum energy spacing of~$10^{-120}$ in Planck units or smaller. Brown-Teitelboim membrane nucleation transitions can populate this landscape of flux vacua. In the thin-wall approximation, and ignoring gravitational corrections, we find that the bubble transitions are always dominated by giant leaps in flux space. The age of the universe places a bound on Calabi-Yau topology that is satisfied for the entire Schöller-Skarke database. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_05357 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Small Vacuum Energy and Tunneling in a Modified Bousso-Polchinski Model Halverson, James Khoury, Justin Long, Cody High Energy Physics - Theory Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology We propose a simplified model for the cosmological constant in string theory flux vacua motivated by type IIB and F-theory compactifications. Relative to the Bousso-Polchinski model, small vacuum energy spacing occurs in thin wafers rather than thin shells. The model is applied to the entire Schöller-Skarke database of Calabi-Yau fourfolds, which exhibit $532,600,483$ distinct sets of Hodge numbers. The overwhelming majority of those ($99.95\%$ percent for some choices of parameters) exhibit a vacuum energy spacing of~$10^{-120}$ in Planck units or smaller. Brown-Teitelboim membrane nucleation transitions can populate this landscape of flux vacua. In the thin-wall approximation, and ignoring gravitational corrections, we find that the bubble transitions are always dominated by giant leaps in flux space. The age of the universe places a bound on Calabi-Yau topology that is satisfied for the entire Schöller-Skarke database. |
| title | Small Vacuum Energy and Tunneling in a Modified Bousso-Polchinski Model |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Theory Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05357 |