We consider flux vacua attractor equations in type IIA string theory compactified on generalized geometries with orientifold projections. The four-dimensional N=1 superpotential in this compactification can be written as the sum of the Ramond-Ramond superpotential and a term described by (non)geometric flux charges. We exhibit a simple model in which supersymmetric AdS and Minkowski solutions are classified by means of discriminants of the two superpotentials. We further study various configurations without Ramond-Ramond flux charges. In this case we find supersymmetric AdS vacua both in the case of compactifications on generalized geometries with SU(3) x SU(3) structures and on manifolds with an SU(3)-structure without nongeometric flux charges. In the latter case, we have to introduce correction terms into the prepotential in order to realize consistent vacua.
We derive algebraic attractor equations describing supersymmetric flux vacua of type IIB string theory in terms of the doublet of the 3-form fluxes, F and H. These equations are similar to the attractor equations for moduli fixed by the charges near the horizon of the supersymmetric black holes.
We summarize and extend our work on flux vacua attractors in generalized compactifications. After reviewing the attractor equations for the heterotic string on SU(3) structure manifolds, we study attractors for N=1 vacua in type IIA/B on SU(3)xSU(3) structure spaces. In the case of vanishing RR flux, we find attractor equations that encode Minkowski vacua only (and which correct a previous normalization error). In addition to our previous considerations, here we also discuss the case of nonzero RR flux and the possibility of attractors for AdS vacua.
The recent progress in the understanding of the landscape of string theory vacua hints that the hierarchy problem might be the problem of a super-selection rule. The attractor mechanism gives a possibility to explain the choice of a vacuum. We consider a toy model of self-interacting membranes and show that for a very generic interaction there are attractor solutions.
We investigate whether there are attractor equations for N=1 flux vacua in generalized compactifications. We fill a gap in the existing literature by verifying analytically that the recently proposed susy attractors, for type IIB CY(3) orientifold compactifications with flux, do give supersymmetric minima of the relevant scalar potential. Furthermore, our considerations clarify various confusions about existing proposals for generalization of the flux vacua attractors to non-Kähler compactifications. We explore different possibilities for generalization and find attractor equations for N=1 Min…
We examine the vacuum structure of 4D effective theories of moduli fields in spacetime compactifications with quantized background fluxes. Imposing the no-scale structure for the volume deformations, we numerically investigate the distributions of flux vacua of the effective potential in complex structure moduli and axio-dilaton directions for two explicit examples in Type IIB string theory and F-theory compactifications. It turns out that distributions of non-supersymmetric flux vacua exhibit a non-increasing functional behavior of several on-shell quantities with respect to the string coupli…
In this note we give multiple examples of the recently proposed New Attractors describing supersymmetric flux vacua and non-supersymmetric extremal black holes in IIB string theory. Examples of non-supersymmetric extremal black hole attractors arise on a hypersurface in $WP^{4}_{1,1,1,1,2}$. For flux vacua on the orientifold of the same hypersurface existence of multiple basins of attraction is established. It is explained that certain fluxes may give rise to multiple supersymmetric flux vacua in a finite region on moduli space, say at the Landau-Ginzburg point and close to conifold point. Thi…
These lectures provide a pedagogical, introductory review of the so-called Attractor Mechanism (AM) at work in two different 4-dimensional frameworks: extremal black holes in N=2 supergravity and N=1 flux compactifications. In the first case, AM determines the stabilization of scalars at the black hole event horizon purely in terms of the electric and magnetic charges, whereas in the second context the AM is responsible for the stabilization of the universal axion-dilaton and of the (complex structure) moduli purely in terms of the RR and NSNS fluxes. Two equivalent approaches to AM, namely th…
We summarize an explicit construction of a duality cycle for geometric transitions in type II and heterotic theories. We emphasize that the manifolds with torsion constructed with this duality cycle are crucial for understanding different phenomena appearing in effective field theories.
We derive new algebraic attractor equations describing supersymmetric flux vacua of type IIB string theory. The first term in these equations, proportional to the gravitino mass (the central charge), is similar to the attractor equations for moduli fixed by the charges near the horizon of the supersymmetric black holes. The second term does not have a counterpart in the theory of black hole attractors. It is proportional to a mass matrix mixing axino-dilatino with complex structure modulino. This allows stabilization of moduli for vanishing central charge, which was not possible for BPS black …
We consider the geometrical engineering constructions for the N = 1 SQCD vacua recently proposed by Giveon and Kutasov. After one T-duality, the geometries with wrapped D5 branes become N = 1 brane configurations with NS branes and D4 branes. The field theories encoded by the geometries contain extra massive adjoint fields for the flavor group. After performing a flop, the geometries contain branes, antibranes and branes wrapped on non-holomorphic cycles. The various tachyon condensations between pairs of wrapped D5 branes and anti D5 branes together with deformations of the cycles give rise t…
We give results for the distribution and number of flux vacua of various types, supersymmetric and nonsupersymmetric, in IIb string theory compactified on Calabi-Yau manifolds. We compare this with related problems such as counting attractor points.
We discuss a mechanism through which the multi-vacua theories, such as String Theory, could solve the Hierarchy Problem, without any UV-regulating physics at low energies. Because of symmetry the number density of vacua with a certain hierarchically-small Higgs mass diverges, and is an attractor on the vacuum landscape.The hierarchy problem is solved in two steps. It is first promoted into a problem of the super-selection rule among the infinite number of vacua (analogous to theta-vacua in QCD), that are finely scanned by the Higgs mass. This rule is lifted by heavy branes, which effectively c…
For a given attractor black hole with generic D6-D4-D2-D0-charges in four dimensions we identify the set of supersymmetric branes, static or stationary in global coordinates, of the corresponding eleven-dimensional near horizon geometry. The set of these BPS states, which includes branes which partially or fully wrap the horizon, should play a role in understanding the partition function of black holes with D6-charges.
We report on recent advances in the study of critical points of the ``black hole effective potential'' V_{BH} (usually named \textit{attractors}) of N=2, d=4 supergravity coupled to n_{V} Abelian vector multiplets, in an asymptotically flat extremal black hole background described by 2n_{V}+2 dyonic charges and (complex) scalar fields which are coordinates of an n_{V}-dimensional Special Kahler manifold.
We observe that the new attractor mechanism describing IIB flux vacua for Calabi-Yau compactifications has a possible extension to the landscape of non-Kaehler vacua that emerge in heterotic compactifications with fluxes. We focus on the effective theories coming from compactifications on generalized half-flat manifolds, showing that the Minkowski "attractor points'' for 3-form fluxes are special-hermitian manifolds.
Max-Planck-Institut für Physik (Werner-Heisenberg-Institut)（马克斯·普朗克物理研究所（维尔纳·海森堡研究所））；Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Galileo Galilei”, Università degli Studi di Padova, and I.N.F.N. Sezione di Padova（帕多瓦大学伽利略·伽利莱物理与天文学系及意大利国家核物理研究所帕多瓦分部）
We analyze higher derivative corrections to attractor geometries in five dimensions. We find corrected AdS_3xS^2 geometries by solving the equations of motion coming from a recently constructed four-derivative supergravity action in five dimensions. The result allows us to explicitly verify a previous anomaly based derivation of the AdS_3 central charges of this theory. Also, by dimensional reduction we compare our results with those of the 4D higher derivative attractor, and find complete agreement.
We study stabilization of hypermoduli with emphasis on the effects of generalized fluxes. We find a class of no-scale vacua described by ISD conditions even in the presence of geometric flux. The associated flux attractor equations can be integrated by a generating function with the property that the hypermoduli are determined by a simple extremization principle. We work out several orbifold examples where all vector moduli and many hypermoduli are stabilized, with VEVs given explicitly in terms of fluxes.
We use Monte Carlo methods to explore the set of toric threefold bases that support elliptic Calabi-Yau fourfolds for F-theory compactifications to four dimensions, and study the distribution of geometrically non-Higgsable gauge groups, matter, and quiver structure. We estimate the number of distinct threefold bases in the connected set studied to be $\sim { 10^{48}}$. The distribution of bases peaks around $h^{1, 1}\sim 82$. All bases encountered after "thermalization" have some geometric non-Higgsable structure. We find that the number of non-Higgsable gauge group factors grows roughly linea…
We investigate several predictions about the properties of IIB flux vacua on Calabi-Yau orientifolds, by constructing and characterizing a very large set of vacua in a specific example, an orientifold of the Calabi-Yau hypersurface in $WP^{4}_{1,1,1,1,4}$. We find support for the prediction of Ashok and Douglas that the density of vacua on moduli space is governed by ${\rm det}(-R - ω)$ where $R$ and $ω$ are curvature and Kähler forms on the moduli space. The conifold point $ψ=1$ on moduli space therefore serves as an attractor, with a significant fraction of the flux vacua contained in a smal…
We study instanton solutions and superpotentials for the large number of vacua of the plane-wave matrix model and a 2+1 dimensional Super Yang-Mills theory on $R\times S^2$ with sixteen supercharges. We get the superpotential in the weak coupling limit from the gauge theory description. We study the gravity description of these instantons. Perturbatively with respect to a background, they are Euclidean branes wrapping cycles in the dual gravity background. Moreover, the superpotential can be given by the energy of the electric charge system characterizing each vacuum. These charges are interpr…
The attractor mechanism governs the near-horizon geometry of extremal black holes in ungauged 4D N=2 supergravity theories and in Calabi-Yau compactifications of string theory. In this paper, we study a natural generalization of this mechanism to solutions of arbitrary 4D N=2 gauged supergravities. We define generalized attractor points as solutions of an ansatz which reduces the Einstein, gauge field, and scalar equations of motion to algebraic equations. The simplest generalized attractor geometries are characterized by non-vanishing constant anholonomy coefficients in an orthonormal frame. …
We study the critical points of the black hole scalar potential $V_{BH}$ in N=2, d=4 supergravity coupled to $n_{V}$ vector multiplets, in an asymptotically flat extremal black hole background described by a 2(n_{V}+1)-dimensional dyonic charge vector and (complex) scalar fields which are coordinates of a special Kähler manifold. For the case of homogeneous symmetric spaces, we find three general classes of regular attractor solutions with non-vanishing Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. They correspond to three (inequivalent) classes of orbits of the charge vector, which is in a 2(n_{V}+1)-dimension…
We revisit various aspects of AdS$_4$ flux vacua with scale separation in type II supergravity and M-theory. We show that massless IIA allows both weakly and strongly coupled solutions for which the classical orientifold backreaction can be tuned small. This is explicitly verified by computing the backreaction at leading order in perturbation theory. We give evidence that the strongly coupled solutions can be lifted to scale-separated and sourceless (but classically singular) geometries in 11D supergravity.
Elliptic Calabi-Yau fibrations with Mordell-Weil group of rank two are constructed. Such geometries are the basis for F-theory compactifications with two abelian gauge groups in addition to non-abelian gauge symmetry. We present the elliptic fibre both as a Bl^2P^2[3]-fibration and in the birationally equivalent Weierstrass form. The spectrum of charged singlets and their Yukawa interactions are worked out in generality. This framework can be combined with the toric construction of tops to implement additional non-abelian gauge groups. We utilise the classification of tops to construct SU(5) x…
Discrete gauge groups naturally arise in F-theory compactifications on genus-one fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds. Such geometries appear in families that are parameterized by the Tate-Shafarevich group of the genus-one fibration. While the F-theory compactification on any element of this family gives rise to the same physics, the corresponding M-theory compactifications on these geometries differ and are obtained by a fluxed circle reduction of the former. In this note, we focus on an element of order three in the Tate-Shafarevich group of the general cubic. We discuss how the different M-theory …
We consider the recently proposed exotic 3D massive gravity. We show that this theory has a rich space of vacua, including asymptotically Anti de-Sitter (AdS) geometries obeying either the standard Brown-Henneaux boundary conditions or the weakened asymptotic behavior of the so-called Log-gravity. Both sectors contain non-Einstein spaces with $SO(2)\times \mathbb{R}$ isometry group, showing that the Birkhoff theorem does not hold all over the parameter space, even if strong AdS boundary conditions are imposed. Some of these geometries correspond to 3D black holes dressed with a Log-gravity gra…
The AdS-bubble solutions interestingly mimic Schrödinger-like geometries when expressed in light-cone coordinates. These D$p$ bubble vacuas exhibit asymmetric scaling property with a negative dynamical exponent of time $a<0$, but are smooth geometries. Through a time-like T-duality we map these vacua to E$p$-brane bubbles with $a>0$ in type II* super-strings. We obtain an expression for the entanglement entropy for `bubble E3-branes'. It is argued that the entropy from E3-bubbles has to be the lowest.
The moduli space of the supersymmetric massive IIA AdS4xS2(B4) vacua, where S2(B4) is a two-sphere bundle over a four-dimensional Kaehler-Einstein base B4, includes three independent parameters which can be thought of as corresponding to the sizes of AdS4, B4 and the S2 fiber. It might therefore be expected that these vacua do not suffer from the absence of scale separation. We show that the independence of the geometric moduli survives flux quantization. However, we uncover an attractor behavior whereby all sizes flow to equality in some neighborhood of spacetime independently of the initial …
We review recent results in the study of attractor horizon geometries (with non-vanishing Bekenstein-Hawking entropy) of dyonic extremal d=4 black holes in supergravity. We focus on N=2, d=4 ungauged supergravity coupled to a number n_{V} of Abelian vector multiplets, outlining the fundamentals of the special Kaehler geometry of the vector multiplets' scalar manifold (of complex dimension n_{V}), and studying the 1/2-BPS attractors, as well as the non-BPS (non-supersymmetric) ones with non-vanishing central charge. For symmetric special Kaehler geometries, we present the complete classificatio…
We apply the techniques of special Kaehler geometry to investigate AdS_4 vacua of general N=2 gauged supergravities underlying flux compactifications of type II theories. We formulate the scalar potential and its extremization conditions in terms of a triplet of prepotentials P_x and their special Kaehler covariant derivatives only, in a form that recalls the potential and the attractor equations of N=2 black holes. We propose a system of first order equations for the P_x which generalize the supersymmetry conditions and yield non-supersymmetric vacua. Special geometry allows us to recast thes…
We study the number of flux vacua for type IIB string theory on an orientifold of the Calabi-Yau expressed as a hypersurface in WCP^4[1,1,2,2,6] by evaluating a suitable integral over the complex-structure moduli space as per the conjecture of Douglas and Ashok. We show that away from the singular conifold locus, one gets a power law, and that the (neighborhood) of the conifold locus indeed acts as an attractor in the (complex structure) moduli space. We also study (non)supersymmetric solutions near the conifold locus.In the process, we evaluate the periods near the conifold locus. We also stu…
We consider near horizon geometries of extremal black holes in six-dimensional type IIB supergravity. In particular, we use the entropy function formalism to compute the charges and thermodynamic entropy of these solutions. We also comment on the role of attractor mechanism in understanding the entropy of the Hopf T-dual solutions in type IIA supergravity.
We analyze the tree-level potential of type IIB flux compactifications in warped Calabi-Yau orientifolds, in regions of weak coupling and moderately large complex structure. In this regime, one may approximate the flux-induced superpotential $W$ by a polynomial on the axio-dilaton and complex structure fields, and a significant fraction of vacua corresponds to a quadratic $W$. In this quadratic case, we argue that vacua fall into three classes, for which one can push the analytic description of their features. In particular, we provide analytic expressions for the vacuum expectation values and…
We construct classes of smooth metrics which interpolate from Bianchi attractor geometries of Types II, III, VI and IX in the IR to Lifshitz or $AdS_2 \times S^3$ geometries in the UV. While we do not obtain these metrics as solutions of Einstein gravity coupled to a simple matter field theory, we show that the matter sector stress-energy required to support these geometries (via the Einstein equations) does satisfy the weak, and therefore also the null, energy condition. Since Lifshitz or $AdS_2 \times S^3$ geometries can in turn be connected to $AdS_5$ spacetime, our results show that there …
Placing anti-D3 branes at the tip of the conifold in Klebanov-Strassler geometry provides a generic way of constructing meta-stable de Sitter (dS) vacua in String Theory. A local geometry of such vacua exhibit gravitational solutions with a D3 charge measured at the tip opposite to the asymptotic charge. We discuss a restrictive set of such geometries, where anti-D3 branes are smeared at the tip. Such geometries represent holographic dual of cascading gauge theory in dS4 with or without chiral symmetry breaking. We find that in the phase with unbroken chiral symmetry the D3 charge at the tip i…
We study the attractor mechanism for N=1 supergravity coupled to vector and chiral multiplets and compute the attractor equations of these theories. These equations may have solutions depending on the choice of the holomorphic symmetric matrix f_{ΛΣ} which appears in the kinetic lagrangian of the vector sector. Models with non trivial electric-magnetic duality group which have or have not attractor behavior are exhibited. For a particular class of models, based on an N=1 reduction of homogeneous special geometries, the attractor equations are related to the theory of pure spinors.
In a recent paper [arXiv:1806.06254], we explored the space of solutions of the exotic massive 3D gravity theory proposed in [arXiv:1806.04179]. We showed that the theory admits a rich space of vacua, including asymptotically Anti de-Sitter (AdS) geometries obeying different types of boundary conditions. The examples include black holes dressed with low decaying gravitons. Based on what happens in other theories of massive gravity, we conjectured that such geometries appear on a curve of the parameter space (chiral curve) where the exotic massive gravity on AdS with sufficiently strong boundar…
We report on some recent progress in understanding heterotic flux compactifications, from a worldsheet perspective mainly. We consider local models consisting in torus fibration over warped Eguchi-Hanson space and non-Kähler resolved conifold geometries. We analyze the supergravity solutions and define a double-scaling limit of the resolved singularities, defined such that the geometry is smooth and weakly coupled. We show that, remarkably, the heterotic solutions admit solvable worldsheet CFT descriptions in this limit. This allows in particular to understand the important role of worldsheet …
We relate across dimensions BPS attractors of black strings and black holes of various topology in gauged supergravities with nontrivial scalar potential. The attractors are of the form AdS$_{2, 3} \times Σ^{2, 3}$ in 4, 5, and 6 dimensions, and can be generalized to some higher dimensional analogs. Even though the attractor geometries admit standard Kaluza-Klein and Scherk-Schwarz reductions, their asymptotic AdS spaces in general do not. The resulting lower dimensional objects are black holes with runaway asymptotics in supergravity theories with no maximally symmetric vacua. Such classes of…
We describe the geometry of the R x SO(3) x SO(6) x U(1) invariant half-BPS M-theory configurations considered in LLM in terms of their electrostatic variables. We discuss both regular configurations, such as AdS_4 x S^7 and AdS_7 x S^4 vacua or simple excited solutions, and singular ones such as the superstar geometries. This allows us to identify the appropriate boundary conditions describing the most general smooth and superstar-like singular configurations. We also compute their masses, matching the expected result from their microscopic interpretation, but now at finite radius of curvatur…
Motivated by the new higher D-supergravity solutions on intersecting attractors obtained by Ferrara et al. in [Phys.Rev.D79:065031-2009], we focus in this paper on 8D maximal supergravity with moduli space [SL(3,R)/SO(3)]x[SL(2,R)/SO(2)] and study explicitly the attractor mechanism for various configurations of extremal black p- branes (anti-branes) with the typical near horizon geometries AdS_{p+2}xS^{m}xT^{6-p-m} and p=0,1,2,3,4; 2<=m<=6. Interpretations in terms of wrapped M2 and M5 branes of the 11D M-theory on 3-torus are also given. Keywords: 8D supergravity, black p-branes, attractor me…
We extend the analysis of N=2 extremal Black-Hole attractor equations to the case of special geometries based on homogeneous coset spaces. For non-BPS critical points (with non vanishing central charge) the (Bekenstein-Hawking) entropy formula is the same as for symmetric spaces, namely four times the square of the central charge evaluated at the critical point. For non homogeneous geometries the deviation from this formula is given in terms of geometrical data of special geometry in presence of a background symplectic charge vector.
Extremal black branes are of interest because they correspond to the ground states of field theories at finite charge density in gauge/gravity duality. The geometry of such a brane need not be translationally invariant in the spatial directions along which it extends. A less restrictive requirement is that of homogeneity, which still allows points along the spatial directions to be related to each other by symmetries. In this paper, we find large new classes of homogeneous but anisotropic extremal black brane horizons, which could naturally arise in gauge/gravity dual pairs. In 4+1 dimensional…
We construct non-perturbatively exact four-dimensional Minkowski vacua of type IIB string theory with non-trivial fluxes. These solutions are found by gluing together, consistently with U-duality, local solutions of type IIB supergravity on $T^4 \times \mathbb{C}$ with the metric, dilaton and flux potentials varying along $\mathbb{C}$ and the flux potentials oriented along $T^4$. We focus on solutions locally related via U-duality to non-compact Ricci-flat geometries. More general solutions and a complete analysis of the supersymmetry equations are presented in the companion paper [1]. We buil…
We find analytic solutions of type IIB supergravity on geometries that locally take the form $\text{Mink}\times M_4\times \mathbb{C}$ with $M_4$ a generalised complex manifold. The solutions involve the metric, the dilaton, NSNS and RR flux potentials (oriented along the $M_4$) parametrised by functions varying only over $\mathbb{C}$. Under this assumption, the supersymmetry equations are solved using the formalism of pure spinors in terms of a finite number of holomorphic functions. Alternatively, the solutions can be viewed as vacua of maximally supersymmetric supergravity in six dimensions …
We geometrically engineer N=2 theories perturbed by a superpotential by adding 3-form flux with support at infinity to local Calabi-Yau geometries in type IIB. This allows us to apply the formalism of Ooguri, Ookouchi, and Park [arXiv:0704.3613] to demonstrate that, by tuning the flux at infinity, we can stabilize the dynamical complex structure moduli in a metastable, supersymmetry-breaking configuration. Moreover, we argue that this setup can arise naturally as a limit of a larger Calabi-Yau which separates into two weakly interacting regions; the flux in one region leaks into the other, whe…
Supersymmetric Moduli Space and Vacua with Vector Fields in $D=4$ Gauged $\mathcal{N}=8$ Supergravity
Universidad de Concepción（康塞普西翁大学）；UNESP-Universidade Estadual Paulista（圣保罗州立大学）；Politecnico di Torino（都灵理工大学）；INFN, Sezione di Torino（意大利国家核物理研究所都灵分部）；Universidade de Santiago de Compostela（圣地亚哥德孔波斯特拉大学）
The organising principles underlying the structure of phenomenologically viable string vacua can be accessed by sampling such vacua. In many cases this is prohibited by the computational cost of standard sampling methods in the high dimensional model space. Here we show how this problem can be alleviated using reinforcement learning techniques to explore string flux vacua. We demonstrate in the case of the type IIB flux landscape that vacua with requirements on the expectation value of the superpotential and the string coupling can be sampled significantly faster by using reinforcement learnin…
Fluctuations of non-Abelian gauge fields in a background magnetic flux contain tachyonic modes and hence the background is unstable. We extend these results to the cases where the background flux is coupled to Einstein gravity and show that the corresponding spherically symmetric geometries, which in the absence of a cosmological constant are of the form of Reissner-Nordstrom blackholes or the AdS_2xS^2, are also unstable. We discuss the relevance of these instabilities to several places in string theory including various string compactifications and the attractor mechanism. Our results for th…
We attempt to quantify the widely-held belief that large hierarchies induced by strongly-warped geometries are common in the string theory landscape. To this end, we focus on the arguably best-understood subset of vacua -- type IIB Calabi-Yau orientifolds with non-perturbative Kaehler stabilization and a SUSY-breaking uplift (the KKLT setup). Within this framework, vacua with a realistically small cosmological constant are expected to come from Calabi-Yaus with a large number of 3-cycles. For appropriate choices of flux numbers, many of these 3-cycles can, in general, shrink to produce near-co…
Applying the Ashok-Denef-Douglas estimation method to elliptic Calabi-Yau fourfolds suggests that a single elliptic fourfold ${\cal M}_{\rm max}$ gives rise to ${\cal O} (10^{272,000})$ F-theory flux vacua, and that the sum total of the numbers of flux vacua from all other F-theory geometries is suppressed by a relative factor of ${\cal O} (10^{-3000})$. The fourfold ${\cal M}_{\rm max}$ arises from a generic elliptic fibration over a specific toric threefold base $B_{\rm max}$, and gives a geometrically non-Higgsable gauge group of $E_8^9 \times F_4^8 \times (G_2 \times SU(2))^{16}$, of which…
We construct instanton solutions describing the decay of flux compactifications of a $6d$ gauge theory by generalizing the Kaluza-Klein bubble of nothing. The surface of the bubble is described by a smooth magnetically charged solitonic brane whose asymptotic flux is precisely that responsible for stabilizing the 4d compactification. We describe several instances of bubble geometries for the various vacua occurring in a $6d$ Einstein-Maxwell theory namely, AdS_4 x S^2, R^{1,3} x S^2, and dS_4 x S^2. Unlike conventional solutions, the bubbles of nothing introduced here occur where a {\em two}-s…
We analyze the Hessian matrix of the black hole potential of N=8, d=4 supergravity, and determine its rank at non-BPS critical points, relating the resulting spectrum to non-BPS solutions (with non-vanishing central charge) of N=2, d=4 magic supergravities and their ``mirror'' duals. We find agreement with the known degeneracy splitting of N=2 non-BPS spectrum of generic special Kahler geometries with cubic holomorphic prepotential. We also relate non-BPS critical points with vanishing central charge in N=2 magic supergravities to a particular reduction of the N=8, 1/8-BPS critical points.
We argue that the vast majority of flux vacua with small cosmological constant are unstable to rapid decay to a big crunch. Exceptions are states with large compactification volume and supersymmetric and approximately supersymmetric states. Neither weak string coupling, warping, or the existence of very light particles are, by themselves, enough to render states reasonably metastable. We speculate, as well, about states which might be cosmological attractors.
We analyze stationary BPS black hole solutions to 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ abelian gauged supergravity. Using an appropriate near horizon ansatz, we construct rotating attractors with magnetic flux realizing a topological twist along the horizon surface, for any theory with a symmetric scalar manifold. An analytic flow to asymptotically locally $AdS_4$ is presented for a subclass of these near horizon geometries, and an explicit new example of supersymmetric $AdS_4$ rotating black hole is discussed in detail. We further note that, upon tuning the gauging to special values, one can obtain solutions w…
