We perform a complete classification of the flux-induced 12d algebras compatible with the set of N=1 type II orientifold models that are T-duality invariant, and allowed by the symmetries of the T^6/(Z_2 x Z_2) isotropic orbifold. The classification is performed in a type IIB frame, where only H_3 and Q fluxes are present. We then study no-go theorems, formulated in a type IIA frame, on the existence of Minkowski/de Sitter (Mkw/dS) vacua. By deriving a dictionary between the sources of potential energy for the three moduli (S, T and U) in types IIA and IIB, we are able to combine algebra results and no-go theorems. The outcome is a systematic procedure for identifying phenomenologically viable models where Mkw/dS vacua may exist. We present a complete table of the allowed algebras and the viability of their resulting scalar potential, and we point at the models which stand any chance of producing a fully stable vacuum.
This article represents the author's PhD thesis. It describes moduli stabilisation in IIB string theory and applications to phenomenological topics. The first half of the thesis starts with an introductory review. It continues with an account of the statistics of complex structure moduli stabilisation before moving to Kahler moduli stabilisation. It describes in detail the large-volumes models and justifies the assumptions used in their construction. The second half of the thesis is concerned with applications to phenomenological topics. These include supersymmetry breaking and soft terms, inf…
Field redefinitions occur in string compactifications at the one loop level. We review arguments for why such redefinitions occur and study their effect on moduli stabilisation and supersymmetry breaking in the LARGE volume scenario. For small moduli, although the effect of such redefinitions can be larger than that of the $α'$ corrections in both the Kähler and scalar potentials, they do not alter the structure of the scalar potential. For the less well motivated case of large moduli, the redefinitions can dominate all other terms in the scalar potential. We also study the effect of redefinit…
In this thesis we study compactifications of type II string theories and M-theory to four dimensions. We construct the four-dimensional N=2 supergravities that arise from compactifications of type IIA string theory and M-theory on manifolds with SU(3)-structure. We then study their potential for moduli stabilisation and give explicit examples where all the moduli are stabilised. We also study the effective action for type IIB conifold transitions on Calabi-Yau manifolds. We find that, although there are small regions in phase space that lead to a completed transition, generically the moduli ar…
The one-loop vacuum energy is explicitly computed for a class of perturbative string vacua where supersymmetry is spontaneously broken by a T-duality invariant asymmetric Scherk-Schwarz deformation. The low-lying spectrum is tachyon-free for any value of the compactification radii and thus no Hagedorn-like phase-transition takes place. Indeed, the induced effective potential is free of divergence, and has a global anti de Sitter minimum where geometric moduli are naturally stabilised.
This article represents the author's PhD thesis which is focused on moduli stabilisation in type IIB Calabi-Yau flux compactifications and its applications to cosmology. I derive the topological conditions on an arbitrary Calabi-Yau to give rise to the very promising LARGE Volume Scenario. After a systematic study of the behaviour of string loop corrections for general type IIB compactifications, I show how they play a crucial role to achieve full moduli stabilisation. I then apply these results to cosmology showing how, in the case of K3-fibrations, string loop corrections give rise naturally…
In this brief note we analyse a toy model which can be derived from heterotic string compactifications on half-flat manifolds with SU(3) structure at first order in α' (ie including matter fields). We show that for this model, finding solutions with viable gauge group poses the same problems as finding solutions in the absence of matter fields.
In this note we analyse the issue of moduli stabilisation in 4d models obtained from heterotic string compactifications on manifolds with SU(3) structure with standard embedding. In order to deal with tractable models we first integrate out the massive fields. We argue that one can not only integrate out the moduli fields, but along the way one has to truncate also the corresponding matter fields. We show that the effective models obtained in this way do not have satisfactory solutions. We also look for stabilised vacua which take into account the presence of the matter fields. We argue that t…
We consider compactifications of type II string theory using exact internal CFT's with central charge $c=9+ε$, $|ε| \ll 1$, leading to an effective potential for the dilaton. For $ε>0$ the potential is positive and the dilaton is ultimately driven to weak coupling. For $ε<0$ the dilaton is driven to strong coupling, but we can stabilise the background by including D-branes. The resulting minimum admits an $AdS_4$ solution where the cosmological constant is of the order $ε^3$ and the string coupling constant is of order $ε$. Furthermore these CFT's typically do not possess any massless or tachy…
Anomalous U(1)'s are ubiquitous in 4D chiral string models. Their presence crucially affects the process of moduli stabilisation and cannot be neglected in realistic set-ups. Their net effect in the 4D effective action is to induce a matter field dependence in the non-perturbative superpotential and a Fayet-Iliopoulos D-term. We study flux compactifications of IIB string theory in the presence of magnetised D7 branes. These give rise to anomalous U(1)'s that modify the standard moduli stabilisation procedure. We consider simple orientifold models to determine the matter field spectrum and the …
Fluxbrane inflation is a stringy version of D-term inflation in which two fluxed D7-branes move towards each other until their (relative) gauge flux annihilates. Compared to brane-antibrane inflation, the leading-order inflationary potential of this scenario is much flatter. In the present paper we first discuss a new explicit moduli stabilisation procedure combining the F- and D-term scalar potentials: It is based on fluxed D7-branes in a geometry with three large four-cycles of hierarchically different volumes. Subsequently, we combine this moduli stabilisation with the fluxbrane inflation i…
We investigate the conditions for a QCD axion to coexist with stabilised moduli in string compactifications. We show how the simplest approaches to moduli stabilisation give unacceptably large masses to the axions. We observe that solving the F-term equations is insufficient for realistic moduli stabilisation and give a no-go theorem on supersymmetric moduli stabilisation with unfixed axions applicable to all string compactifications and relevant to much current work. We demonstrate how nonsupersymmetric moduli stabilisation with unfixed axions can be realised. We finally outline how to stabil…
We study the influence of anomalous U(1) symmetries and their associated D-terms on the vacuum structure of global field theories once they are coupled to N=1 supergravity and in the context of string compactifications with moduli stabilisation. In particular, we focus on a IIB string motivated construction of the ISS scenario and examine the influence of one additional U(1) symmetry on the vacuum structure. We point out that in the simplest one-Kahler modulus compactification, the original ISS vacuum gets generically destabilised by a runaway behaviour of the potential in the modulus directio…
Moduli stabilisation in superstring compactifications on Calabi-Yau orientifolds remains a key challenge in the search for realistic string vacua. In particular, odd moduli arising from the reduction of 2-forms $(B_2,C_2)$ in type IIB are largely unexplored despite their relevance for inflationary model building. This article provides novel insights into the general structure of 4D $\mathcal{N}=1$ $F$-term scalar potentials at higher orders in the $α^{\prime}$ and $g_{s}$ expansion for arbitrary Hodge numbers. We systematically examine superpotential contributions with distinct moduli dependen…
We investigate whether Swampland constraints on the low-energy dynamics of weakly coupled, moduli-stabilised string vacua in AdS can be related to inconsistencies of their putative holographic duals or, more generally, recast in terms of CFT data. We find that various swampland consistency constraints are equivalent to a negativity condition on the sign of certain mixed anomalous dimensions. This condition is similar to well-established CFT positivity bounds arising from causality and unitarity, but not known to hold in general. The studied scenarios include LVS, KKLT, and both perturbative an…
We present a concrete and consistent procedure to generate one kind of non-perturbative superpotential, including the gaugino condensation corrections and poly-instanton corrections, in type IIB orientifold compactification with four Kahler Moduli. Then we use this kind of superpotential as well as the alphaprime-corrections to Kahler potential to fix all of the four Kahler moduli on a general Calabi-Yau manifold with typical K3-fibred volume form. In our construction, the considered Calabi-Yau threefolds are K3-fibred and admit at least one del Pezzo surface and one W-surface. Searching throu…
Achieving full moduli stabilisation in type IIB string compactifications for generic Calabi-Yau threefolds with hundreds of Kähler moduli is notoriously hard. This is due not just to the very fast increase of the computational complexity with the number of moduli, but also to the fact that the scalar potential depends in general on the supergravity variables only implicitly. In fact, the supergravity chiral coordinates are 4-cycle volume moduli but the Kähler potential is an explicit function of the 2-cycle moduli and inverting between these two variables is in general impossible. In this pape…
In the context of type IIB string theory we combine moduli stabilisation and model building on branes at del Pezzo singularities in a fully consistent global compactification. By means of toric geometry, we classify all the CY manifolds with 3 < h11 < 6 which admit two identical del Pezzo singularities mapped into each other under the orientifold involution. This effective singularity hosts the visible sector containing the Standard Model while the Kaehler moduli are stabilised via a combination of D-terms, perturbative and non-perturbative effects supported on hidden sectors. We present concr…
Standard results in 4d N=1 string compactifications assign a number of moduli to each space-time filling D-brane, computed by analysing the D-brane action in a fixed background. We revisit such conventional wisdom and argue that this naive counting of open string moduli is incorrect, in the sense that some of them will be lifted when making dynamical the bulk degrees of freedom. We explicitly discuss this effect for D6-branes wrapping special Lagrangian three-cycles, showing that some geometric and Wilson line moduli are lifted even before taking into account worldsheet instanton effects. From…
We study the superpotential induced by Euclidean D3-brane instantons carrying instanton flux, with special emphasis on its significance for the stabilisation of Kahler moduli and Neveu-Schwarz axions in Type IIB orientifolds. Quite generally, once a chiral observable sector is included in the compactification, arising on intersecting D7-branes with world-volume flux, resulting charged instanton zero modes prevent a class of instantons from participating in moduli stabilisation. We show that instanton flux on Euclidean D3-branes can remove these extra zero modes and helps in reinstating full mo…
We propose a new mechanism of (geometric) moduli stabilisation in type IIB/F-theory four-dimensional compactifications on Calabi-Yau manifolds, in the presence of 7-branes, that does not rely on non-perturbative effects. Complex structure moduli and the axion-dilaton system are stabilised in the standard way, without breaking supersymmetry, using 3-form internal fluxes. Kähler class moduli stabilisation utilises perturbative string loop corrections, together with internal magnetic fields along the D7-branes world-volume leading to Fayet-Iliopoulos D-terms in the effective supergravity action. …
Intersecting D6-branes provide a geometrically intuitive road to stringy particle physics models, where D6-branes stuck at orbifold singularities can lead to the stabilisation of deformation moduli, and the QCD axion can arise from the open string sector in a very constrained way compared to pure field theory. We demonstrate this interplay of different physical features here through an explicit model.
A brief overview is presented of the progress made during the past few years on the general structure of local models of particle physics from string theory including: moduli stabilisation, supersymmetry breaking, global embedding in compact Calabi-Yau compactifications and potential cosmological implications. Type IIB D-brane constructions and the Large Volume Scenario (LVS) are discussed in some detail emphasising the recent achievements and the main open questions.
In this paper we analyze the structure of supersymmetric vacua in compactifications of the heterotic string on certain manifolds with SU(3) structure. We first study the effective theories obtained from compactifications on half-flat manifolds and show that solutions which stabilise the moduli at acceptable values are hard to find. We then derive the effective theories associated with compactification on generalised half-flat manifolds. It is shown that these effective theories are consistent with four-dimensional N=1 supergravity and that the superpotential can be obtained by a Gukov-Vafa-Wit…
We study the topological conditions for general Calabi-Yaus to get a non-supersymmetric AdS exponentially large volume minimum of the scalar potential in flux compactifications of IIB string theory. We show that negative Euler number and the existence of at least one blow-up mode resolving point-like singularities are necessary and sufficient conditions for moduli stabilisation with exponentially large volumes. We also analyse the general effects of string loop corrections on this scenario. While the combination of alpha' and nonperturbative corrections are sufficient to stabilise blow-up mode…
We study the large volume limit of the scalar potential in Calabi-Yau flux compactifications of type IIB string theory. Under general circumstances there exists a limit in which the potential approaches zero from below, with an associated non-supersymmetric AdS minimum at exponentially large volume. Both this and its de Sitter uplift are tachyon-free, thereby fixing all Kahler and complex structure moduli, which has been difficult to achieve in the KKLT scenario. Also, for the class of vacua described in this paper, the gravitino mass is independent of the flux discretuum, whereas the ratio of…
Inflation and moduli stabilisation mechanisms work well independently, and many string-motivated supergravity models have been proposed for them. However a complete theory will contain both, and there will be (gravitational) interactions between the two sectors. These give corrections to the inflaton potential, which generically ruin inflation. This holds true even for fine-tuned moduli stabilisation schemes. Following a suggestion by 0712.3460, we show that a viable combined model can be obtained if it is the Kahler functions (G= K+\ln |W|^2) of the two sectors that are added, rather than the…
We discuss deformations of orbifold singularities on tilted tori in the context of Type IIA orientifold model building with D6-branes on special Lagrangian cycles. Starting from $T^6/(\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_2)$, we mod out an additional $\mathbb{Z}_3$ symmetry to describe phenomenologically appealing backgrounds and reduce to $\mathbb{Z}_3$ and $Ω\mathcal{R}$ invariant orbits of deformations. While D6-branes carrying SO(2N) or USp(2N) gauge groups do not constrain deformations, D6-branes with U(N) gauge groups develop non-vanishing D-terms if they couple to previously singular, now def…
We analyse the flux-induced scalar potential for type IIA orientifolds in the presence of $p$-form, geometric and non-geometric fluxes. Just like in the Calabi-Yau case, the potential presents a bilinear structure, with a factorised dependence on axions and saxions. This feature allows one to perform a systematic search for vacua, which we implement for the case of geometric backgrounds. Guided by stability criteria, we consider configurations with a particular on-shell F-term pattern, for which we derive a no-go result for de Sitter extrema. We classify branches of supersymmetric and non-supe…
We investigate the general question of implementing a chiral MSSM like D-brane sector in Type IIB orientifold models with complete moduli stabilisation via F-terms induced by fluxes and space-time instantons, respectively gaugino condensates. The prototype examples are the KKLT and the so-called large volume compactifications. We show that the ansatz of first stabilising all moduli via F-terms and then introducing the Standard Model module is misleading, as a chiral sector notoriously influences the structure of non-perturbative effects and induces a D-term potential. Focusing for concreteness…
We study moduli stabilization by thermal effects in the cosmological context. The implementation of finite temperature, which spontaneously breaks supersymmetry, induces an effective potential at one loop level. At the points where extra massless states appear in the string spectrum, the potential develops local minima whose depth depends on the temperature. Moduli attracted to these points acquire dynamical masses which decrease with cosmological evolution. This makes the coherent scalar oscillations dilute before nucleosynthesis, and the cosmological moduli problem is avoided. In particular,…
Chaotic inflation predicts a large gravitational wave signal which can be tested by the upcoming Planck satellite. We discuss a SUGRA implementation of chaotic inflation in the presence of moduli fields, and find that inflation does not work with a generic KKLT moduli stabilisation potential. A viable model can be constructed with a fine-tuned moduli sector, but only for a very specific choice of Kahler potential. Our analysis also shows that inflation models satisfying \partial_{i} W_{\rm inf}=0 for all inflation sector fields ϕ_i can be combined successfully with a fine-tuned moduli sector.
We study the problem of moduli stabilisation in explicit heterotic orbifold compactifications, whose spectra contain the MSSM plus some vector-like exotics that can be decoupled. Considering all the bulk moduli, we obtain the 4D low energy effective action for the compactification, which has contributions from various, computable, perturbative and non-perturbative effects. Hidden sector gaugino condensation and string worldsheet instantons result in a combination of racetrack, KKLT and cusp-form contributions to the superpotential, which lift all the bulk moduli directions. We point out the pr…
In the framework of type IIB string compactifications on Calabi-Yau orientifolds we describe how to construct consistent global embeddings of models with fractional D3-branes and connected `flavour' D7-branes at del Pezzo singularities with moduli stabilisation. Our results are applied to build an explicit compact example with a left-right symmetric model at a dP_0 singularity which features three families of chiral matter and gauge coupling unification at the intermediate scale. We show how to stabilise the moduli obtaining a controlled de Sitter minimum and spontaneous supersymmetry breaking…
We provide a detailed analysis of the dynamics of moduli fields in the KKLT scenario coupled to a Polonyi field, which plays the role of a hidden matter sector field. It was previously shown that such matter fields can uplift AdS vacua to Minkowski or de Sitter vacua. Additionally, we take a background fluid into account (which can be either matter or radiation), which aids moduli stabilisation. Our analysis shows that the presence of the matter field further aids stabilisation, due to a new scaling regime. We study the system both analytically and numerically.
We study moduli stabilisation in four-dimensional $N=1$ supergravity theories which originate from compactifications of the heterotic string on certain manifolds with $SU(3)$ structure. These theories have a non-trivial superpotential generated from geometric flux and, in general, D-terms associated to anomalous $U(1)$ symmetries. We show that, at the perturbative level, there are no supersymmetry preserving vacua. However, subject to a certain technical condition on the D-terms which aligns the extrema of the F-term and D-term potentials, $\partial_iV_F=\partial_iV_D=0$, we find at the pertur…
The statistics of the supersymmetry breaking scale in the string landscape has been extensively studied in the past finding either a power-law behaviour induced by uniform distributions of F-terms or a logarithmic distribution motivated by dynamical supersymmetry breaking. These studies focused mainly on type IIB flux compactifications but did not systematically incorporate the Kähler moduli. In this paper we point out that the inclusion of the Kähler moduli is crucial to understand the distribution of the supersymmetry breaking scale in the landscape since in general one obtains unstable vacu…
We study the effective field theory of KKLT and LVS moduli stabilisation scenarios coupled to an anti-D3-brane at the tip of a warped throat. We describe the presence of the anti-brane in terms of a nilpotent goldstino superfield in a supersymmetric effective field theory. The introduction of this superfield produces a term that can lead to a de Sitter minimum. We fix the Kaehler moduli dependence of the nilpotent field couplings by matching this term with the anti-D3-brane uplifting contribution. The main result of this paper is the computation, within this EFT, of the soft supersymmetry brea…
We present a model of inflation based on a racetrack model without flux stabilization. The initial conditions are set automatically through topological inflation. This ensures that the dilaton is not swept to weak coupling through either thermal effects or fast roll. Including the effect of non-dilaton fields we find that moduli provide natural candidates for the inflaton. The resulting potential generates slow-roll inflation without the need to fine tune parameters. The energy scale of inflation must be near the GUT scale and the scalar density perturbation generated has a spectrum consistent…
String theory realisations of the QCD axion are often said to belong to the anthropic window where the decay constant is around the GUT scale and the initial misalignment angle has to be tuned close to zero. In this paper we revisit this statement by studying the statistics of axion physics in the string landscape. We take moduli stabilisation properly into account since the stabilisation of the saxions is crucial to determine the physical properties of the corresponding axionic partners. We focus on the model-independent case of closed string axions in type IIB flux compactifications and find…
We study string loop corrections to the gravity kinetic terms in type IIB compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds or their orbifold limits, in the presence of $D7$-branes and orientifold planes. We show that they exhibit in general a logarithmic behaviour in the large volume limit transverse to the $D7$-branes, induced by a localised four-dimensional Einstein-Hilbert action that appears at a lower order in the closed string sector, found in the past. Here, we compute the coefficient of the logarithmic corrections and use them to provide an explicit realisation of a mechanism for Kähler modu…
Moduli Stabilisation for ADD and the Dark Dimension Scenario
Durham University（杜伦大学）；Università di Bologna（博洛尼亚大学）；INFN, Sezione di Bologna（意大利国家核物理研究所博洛尼亚分部）；Università di Trieste（的里雅斯特大学）；INFN, Sezione di Trieste（意大利国家核物理研究所的里雅斯特分部）
We study the structure of the supersymmetric moduli spaces of ${\cal N}=1$ and ${\cal N}=2$ supergravity theories in $AdS_4$ backgrounds. In the ${\cal N}=1$ case, the moduli space cannot be a complex submanifold of the Kähler field space, but is instead real with respect to the inherited complex structure. In ${\cal N}=2$ supergravity the same result holds for the vector multiplet moduli space, while the hypermultiplet moduli space is a Kähler submanifold of the quaternionic-Kähler field space. These findings are in agreement with AdS/CFT considerations.
We review recent attempts to try to combine global issues of string compactifications, like moduli stabilisation, with local issues, like semi-realistic D-brane constructions. We list the main problems encountered, and outline a possible solution which allows globally consistent embeddings of chiral models. We also argue that this stabilisation mechanism leads to an axiverse. We finally illustrate our general claims in a concrete example where the Calabi-Yau manifold is explicitly described by toric geometry.
We perform a systematic analysis of moduli stabilisation for weakly coupled heterotic string theory compactified on manifolds which are Calabi-Yau up to alpha' effects. We review how to fix all geometric and bundle moduli in a supersymmetric way by fractional fluxes, the requirement of a holomorphic gauge bundle, D-terms, higher order perturbative contributions to W, non-perturbative and threshold effects. We then show that alpha' corrections to K lead to new stable Minkowski (or dS) vacua where the complex structure moduli Z and the dilaton are fixed supersymmetrically, while the fixing of th…
We derive general expressions for soft terms in supergravity where D-terms contribute significantly to the supersymmetry breaking in addition to the standard F-type breaking terms. Such D-terms can strongly influence the scalar mass squared terms, while having limited impact on gaugino masses and the B-terms. We present parameterisations for the soft terms when D-terms dominate over F-terms or become comparable with them. Novel patterns emerge which can be tested phenomenologically. In a mixed anomaly-D mediated scenario, the scalars have masses from D-mediation, whereas gaugino masses are gen…
This is an account of lectures that were given at TASI 2005, the Shanghai Summer School in M-theory 2005 and the Perimeter Institute. I review 1) the derivation of the potential for chiral scalar fields in ${\cal N}$=1 supergravity 2) the relation between F and D terms for chiral scalars, Weyl anomalies and the generation of non-perturbative terms in the superpotential and 3) the derivation of effective potentials for light moduli in type IIB string theory.
We calculate the scalar potential of supersymmetric QCD (in the regime N_f < N_c) coupled to N=1 supergravity with moduli-dependent gauge kinetic function and masses. The gauge dynamics are described by the Taylor-Veneziano-Yankielowicz superpotential for composite effective fields. The potential can be expanded about the ``truncated'' point in the gaugino and matter condensate directions in order to find corrections to the globally supersymmetric minimum. The results are relevant to the phenomenology of supersymmetry-breaking in string-inspired supergravity models, and also to recent work on …
In this talk we review some results concerning a mechanism for reducing the moduli space of a topological field theory to a proper submanifold of the ordinary moduli space. Such mechanism is explicitly realized in the example of constrained topological gravity, obtained by topologically twisting the N=2 Liouville theory.
We determine the conditions for maximally supersymmetric AdS_5 vacua of five-dimensional gauged N=2 supergravity coupled to vector-, tensor- and hypermultiplets charged under an arbitrary gauge group. In particular, we show that the unbroken gauge group of the AdS_5 vacua has to contain an U(1)_R-factor. Moreover we prove that the scalar deformations which preserve all supercharges form a Kahler submanifold of the ambient quaternionic Kahler manifold spanned by the scalars in the hypermultiplets.
In this work we investigate the moduli stabilisation problem and the requirements for de Sitter vacua within the framework of type IIB string theory. Using perturbative effects arising from the various sources such as $α^\prime$ corrections, logarithmic as well as KK and winding-type string-loop corrections along with the higher derivative $F^4$-contributions, we present a moduli stabilisation scheme in which the overall volume is realised at exponentially large values such that $\langle {\cal V} \rangle \simeq e^{a/g_s^2}$ in the weak coupling regime, where $a$ is a parameter given as $a = \f…
Natural inflation relies on the existence of an axion decay constant which is super-Planckian. In string theory only sub-Planckian axion decay constants have been found in any controlled regime. However in field theory it is possible to generate an enhanced super-Planckian decay constant by an appropriate aligned mixing between axions with individual sub-Planckian decay constants. We study the possibility of such a mechanism in string theory. In particular we construct a new realisation of an alignment scenario in type IIA string theory compactifications on a Calabi-Yau where the alignment is …
We combine moduli stabilisation and (chiral) model building in a fully consistent global set-up in Type IIB/F-theory. We consider compactifications on Calabi-Yau orientifolds which admit an explicit description in terms of toric geometry. We build globally consistent compactifications with tadpole and Freed-Witten anomaly cancellation by choosing appropriate brane set-ups and world-volume fluxes which also give rise to SU(5)- or MSSM-like chiral models. We fix all the Kaehler moduli within the Kaehler cone and the regime of validity of the 4D effective field theory. This is achieved in a way c…
The leading order dynamics of the type IIB Large Volume Scenario is characterised by the interplay between $α'$ and non-perturbative effects which fix the overall volume and all local blow-up modes leaving (in general) several flat directions. In this paper we show that, in an arbitrary Calabi-Yau with at least one blow-up mode resolving a point-like singularity, any remaining flat directions can be lifted at subleading order by the inclusions of higher derivative $α'$ corrections. We then focus on simple fibred cases with one remaining flat direction which can behave as an inflaton if its pot…
Anti-D3 branes and non-perturbative effects in flux compactifications spontaneously break supersymmetry and stabilise moduli in a metastable de Sitter vacua. The low energy 4D effective field theory description for such models would be a supergravity theory with non-linearly realised supersymmetry. Guided by string theory modular symmetry, we compute this non-linear supergravity theory, including dependence on all bulk moduli. Using either a constrained chiral superfield or a constrained vector field, the uplifting contribution to the scalar potential from the anti-D3 brane can be parameterise…
Only two kinds of compactification are known that lead to four-dimensional supersymmetric AdS vacua with moduli stabilisation and separation of scales at tree-level. The most studied ones are compactifications of massive IIA supergravity on SU(3) structures with smeared O6 planes, for which a general ten-dimensional expression for the solution in terms of the SU(3) structure was found. Less studied are compactifications of IIB supergravity with smeared O5/O7 planes. In this paper we derive a general ten-dimensional expression for the smeared O5/O7 solutions in terms of SU(2) structures. For a …
We analyze the moduli space of spontaneously broken N=8 supergravity theories in 4 dimensions with classical Minkowski vacua. We find that all the known classical vacua, as well as the several new ones we construct here, can be connected by sending some of the moduli to their boundary values. We also show that Cremmer-Scherk-Schwarz models can be viewed as special limits of more general CSO* gaugings, which allow for non-Abelian residual symmetries on the vacuum. Finally, we find that all the classical Minkowski vacua with fully broken supersymmetry found so far are unstable with respect to 1-…
We present a twistor-like formula for the complete tree-level S matrix of 6D $(2,0)$ supergravity coupled to $21$ abelian tensor multiplets. This is the low-energy effective theory that corresponds to Type IIB superstring theory compactified on a $\mathrm{K}3$ surface. The formula is expressed as an integral over the moduli space of certain rational maps of the punctured Riemann sphere. By studying soft limits of the formula, we are able to explore the local moduli space of this theory, ${SO(5,21)\over SO(5)\times SO(21)}$. Finally, by dimensional reduction, we also obtain a new formula for th…
We present a D-term hybrid inflation model, embedded in supergravity with moduli stabilisation. Its novel features allow us to overcome the serious challenges of combining D-term inflation and moduli fields within the same string-motivated theory. One salient point of the model is the positive definite uplifting D-term arising from the moduli stabilisation sector. By coupling this D-term to the inflationary sector, we generate an effective Fayet-Iliopoulos term. Moduli corrections to the inflationary dynamics are also obtained. Successful inflation is achieved for a limited range of parameter …
