We consider two infinite families of Non-Supersymmetric $AdS_4$ vacua, called Type 2) and Type 3) vacua, that arise in massive IIA supergravity with flux. We show that both families are perturbatively stable. We then examine non-perturbative decays of these vacua to other supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric $AdS_4$ vacua mediated by instantons in the thin wall approximation. We find that many decays are ruled out since the tension of the interpolating domain wall is too big compared to the energy difference in AdS units. In fact, within our approximations no decays of Type 2) vacua are allowed, although some decays are only marginally forbidden. This can be understood in terms of a "pairing symmetry" in the landscape which relate Type 2) vacua with supersymmetric ones of the same energy.
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.
AdS flux vacua with a parametric separation between the AdS and KK scales have been conjectured to be in the Swampland. We study flux compactifications of massive IIA supergravity with O6 planes which are claimed to allow moduli-stabilised and scale separated AdS$_3$ and AdS$_4$ vacua at arbitrary weak coupling and large volume. A recent refinement of the AdS Distance Conjecture is shown to be inconsistent with the class of AdS$_3$ vacua because the requisite discrete higher form symmetries are absent. We further perform a tree-level study of non-perturbative decays for the nonsupersymmetric v…
In this paper, we are looking for $\mathcal{N}=1$, AdS$_4$ sourceless vacua in type IIB. While several examples exist in type IIA , there exists only one example of such vacua in type IIB . Thanks to the framework of generalized geometry we were able to devise a semi-algorithmical method to look for sourceless vacua. We present this method, which can easily be generalized to more complex cases, and give two new vacua in type IIB.
We present a detailed analysis of non-supersymmetric spacetime varying string vacua which can lead to an exponential hierarchy between the electroweak and the gravitational scales. In particular, we identify a limit in which these vacua can be interpreted as supersymmetric vacua of F-theory. Furthermore, we study the properties of these solutions as seen by $D7$-brane probes and establish a non-supersymmetric analogue of the enhancon mechanism.
We construct new families of non-supersymmetric sourceless type IIA AdS4 vacua on those coset manifolds that also admit supersymmetric solutions. We investigate the spectrum of left-invariant modes and find that most, but not all, of the vacua are stable under these fluctuations. Generically, there are also no massless moduli.
Supersymmetric Minkowski vacua in IIB orientifold compactifications based on orbifolds with background fluxes and non-perturbative superpotentials are investigated. Especially, microscopic requirements and difficulties to obtain such vacua are discussed. We show that orbifold models with one and two complex structure moduli and supersymmetric 2-form flux can be successfully stabilized to such vacua. By taking additional gaugino condensation on fixed space-time filling D3-branes into account also models without complex structure can be consistently stabilized to Minkowski vacua.
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.
We study the supersymmetric vacua of the Veneziano-Wosiek model in sectors with fermion number F=2, 4 at finite 't Hooft coupling lambda. We prove that for F=2 there are two zero energy vacua for lambda > lambda_c = 1 and none otherwise. We give the analytical expressions of both vacua. One of them was previously known, the second one is obtained by solving the cohomology of the supersymmetric charges. At F=4 we compute the would-be supersymmetric vacua at high order in the the strong coupling expansion and provide strong support to the conclusion that lambda = 1 is a critical point in this se…
We give an explicit formulation of the time dependent AdS/CFT correspondence when there are multiple vacua present in Lorentzian signature. By computing sample two point functions we show how different amplitudes are related by cosmological particle production. We illustrate our methods in two example spacetimes: (a) a ``bubble of nothing'' in AdS space, and (b) an asymptotically locally AdS spacetime with a bubble of nothing on the boundary. In both cases the alpha vacua of de Sitter space make an interesting appearance.
We perform a systematic search for anti-de Sitter vacua of maximal supergravity with N>2 residual supersymmetries. We find that maximal supergravity admits two 1-parameter classes of N=3 and N=4 vacua, respectively. They are embedded, for the different values of an angular parameter, in the $ω$-rotated SO(8) (N=3) and SO(1,7) (N=4 and 3) gauged models. All vacua disappear in the limit when $ω$ tends to zero. We determine the mass spectra and the AdS-supermultiplet structure. These appear to be the first and only N>2 supersymmetric AdS vacua in maximal supergravity, aside from the N=8 vacua of …
In the context of supersymmetric Wess-Zumino models with an R symmetry, we find some simple conditions on the R-charge content of the theory that imply the presence or absence of supersymmetric and R-symmetric vacua. The main result of this work is that the comparison between the number of R-charge 0 and R-charge 2 superfields is essential to the properties of the model as regards symmetry breaking. We also study possible exceptions to the Nelson-Seiberg theorem --finding that there are supersymmetric vacua that break R symmetry in generic models-- and the spontaneous breaking of R symmetry in…
It has recently been argued that the confining vacua of Yang-Mills theory in the far infrared can have topological degrees of freedom given by magnetic $\mathbb{Z}_q$ gauge field, both in the non-supersymmetric case and in the N=1 supersymmetric case. In this short note we give another piece of evidence by computing and matching the supersymmetric index of the pure super Yang-Mills theory both in the ultraviolet and in the infrared.
We study supersymmetric AdS$_7$ vacua of massive type IIA string theory, which were argued to describe the near-horizon limit of NS5/D6/D8-brane intersections and to be holographically dual to 6D $(1,0)$ theories. We show, for the case without D8-brane charges, that such vacua do not admit any supersymmetry-breaking deformations. Our result implies that the dual $(1,0)$ theories do not have a conformal manifold, thus extending previously known results for supersymmetric deformations. It is also in line with the recent conjecture that non-supersymmetric AdS vacua are in the swampland.
We find the complete chiral ring relations of the supersymmetric U(N) gauge theories with matter in adjoint representation. We demonstrate exact correspondence between the solutions of the chiral ring and the supersymmetric vacua of the gauge theory. The chiral ring determines the expectation values of chiral operators and the low energy gauge group. All the vacua have nonzero gaugino condensation. We study the chiral ring relations obeyed by the gaugino condensate. These relations are generalizations of the formula $S^N=Λ^{3N}$ of the pure ${\cal N} =1$ gauge theory.
We study $N=1$ supersymmetric $SP(N_c)$ gauge theories with $N_f$ flavors of quarks in the fundamental representation. Depending on $N_f$ and $N_c$, we find exact, dynamically generated superpotentials, smooth quantum moduli spaces of vacua, quantum moduli spaces of vacua with additional massless composites at strong coupling, confinement without chiral symmetry breaking, non-trivial fixed points of the renormalization group, and massless magnetic quarks and gluons.
Some N=1 gauge theories, including SQED and N_F=1 SQCD have the property that, for arbitrary superpotentials, all stationary points of the potential V = F+D are D-flat. For others, stationary points of V are complex gauge transformationss of D-flat configurations. As an implication, the technique to parametrize the moduli space of supersymmetric vacua in terms of a set of basic holomorphic G invariants can be extended to non-supersymmetric vacua. A similar situation is found in non-gauge theories with a compact global symmetry group.
AdS3 vacua of topologically massive gravity (TMG) have been shown to be perturbatively unstable for all values of the coupling constant except the chiral point μl=1. We study the possibility that the warped vacua of TMG, which exist for all values of μ, are stable under linearized perturbations. In this paper, we show that spacelike warped AdS3 vacua with Compere-Detournay boundary conditions are indeed stable in the range μl > 3. This is precisely the range in which black hole solutions arise as discrete identifications of the warped AdS3 vacuum. The situation somewhat resembles chiral gravit…
We review open descendants of non-supersymmetric type IIB asymmetric orbifolds with zero cosmological constant. We find that supersymmetry remains unbroken on the branes at all mass levels, whereas it is broken in the bulk.
We study AdS backgrounds of N=4 supergravity in four space-time dimensions which preserve all sixteen supercharges. We show that the graviphotons have to form a subgroup of the gauge group that consists of an electric and a magnetic SO(3)_+ x SO(3)_-. Moreover, these N=4 AdS backgrounds are necessarily isolated points in field space which have no moduli.
We investigate models of SU(N) SQCD with adjoint matter and non trivial mesonic deformations. We apply standard methods in the dual magnetic theory and we find meta-stable supersymmetry breaking vacua with arbitrary large lifetime. We comment on the difference with known models.
We study a class of N=1 supersymmetric U(N) gauge theories and find that there exist vacua in which the low-energy magnetic effective gauge group contains multiple nonabelian factors, \prod_i SU(r_i), supported by light monopoles carrying the associated nonabelian charges. These nontrivially generalize the physics of the so-called r-vacua found in softly broken N=2 supersymmetric SU(N) QCD, with an effective low-energy gauge group SU(r) \times U(1)^{N-r}. The matching between classical and quantum (r_{1}, r_{2},...) vacua gives an interesting hint about the nonabelian duality.
An explicit proof of the existence of nontrivial vacua in the pure supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with higher orthogonal SO(N), N>=7 or the G_2 gauge group defined on a 3-torus with periodic boundary conditions is given. Extra vacuum states are separated by an energy barrier from the perturbative vacuum A_i=0 and its gauge copies.
We classify the N=4 supersymmetric AdS5 backgrounds that arise as solutions of five-dimensional N=4 gauged supergravity. We express our results in terms of the allowed embedding tensor components and identify the structure of the associated gauge groups. We show that the moduli space of these AdS vacua is of the form SU(1,m)/(U(1)x SU(m)) and discuss our results regarding holographically dual N=2 SCFTs and their conformal manifolds.
We analyse type IIA Calabi-Yau orientifolds with background fluxes and D6-branes. Rewriting the F-term scalar potential as a bilinear in flux-axion polynomials yields a more efficient description of the Landscape of flux vacua, as they are invariant under the discrete shift symmetries of the 4d effective theory. In particular, expressing the extremisation conditions of the scalar potential in terms of such polynomials allows for a systematic search of vacua. We classify families of N=0 Minkowski, N=1 AdS and N=0 AdS flux vacua, extending previous findings in the literature to the Calabi-Yau co…
We consider a wide class of cascading gauge theories which usually lead to runaway behaviour in the IR, and discuss possible deformations of the superpotential at the bottom of the cascade which stabilize the runaway direction and provide stable non-supersymmetric vacua. The models we find may allow for a weakly coupled supergravity analysis of dynamical supersymmetric breaking in the context of the gauge/string correspondence.
Reducing Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Field Theory to a single point in the three dimensional space results in the Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Quantum Mechanics (SYMQM) which basically is the effective quantum mechanics of zero momentum modes of the original theory. Such a system is still quite non-trivial and usually inherits many properties of the original field theory. In this talk some beautiful features of the three-dimensional model will be reviewed and illustrated with the aid of the recent, quantitative solution. In particular the structure of the supersymmetric vacua and condensates will b…
We use exceptional field theory to compute Kaluza-Klein mass spectra around ${\rm AdS_{3}}$ vacua that sit in half-maximal gauged supergravity in three dimensions. The formalism applies to any vacuum that arises from a consistent truncation of higher-dimensional supergravity, no matter what symmetries are preserved. We illustrate its efficiency by computing the spectra of ${\cal N}=(2,0)$ and ${\cal N}=(1,1)$ six-dimensional supergravities on ${\rm AdS_{3}}\times S^{3}$ and of type II supergravity on ${\rm AdS_{3}}\times S^{3}\times S^{3}\times S^{1}$.
We study fully supersymmetric $AdS_6$ vacua of half-maxi\-mal $N=(1,1)$ gauged supergravity in six space-time dimensions coupled to $n$ vector multiplets. We show that the existence of $AdS_6$ backgrounds requires that the gauge group is of the form $G'\times G"\subset SO(4,n)$ where $G'\subset SO(3,m)$ and $G"\subset SO(1,n-m)$. In the $AdS_6$ vacua this gauge group is broken to its maximal compact subgroup $SO(3)\times H'\times H"$ where $H'\subset SO(m)$ and $H"\subset SO(n-m)$. Furthermore, the $SO(3)$ factor is the R-symmetry gauged by three of the four graviphotons. We further show that …
We derive an exact unified formula for all condensates (quark and monopole) in the hybrid r vacua in N=2 supersymmetric QCD slightly deformed by a μA^2 term. The gauge group is assumed to be U(N) and the number of the quark flavors N_f subject to the condition N< N_f < 2N. In the r vacua r quarks and N-r-1 monopoles from non-overlapping subgroups of U(N) develop vacuum expectation values (r<N). We then briefly review possible dynamical regimes (confinement, screening, and "instead of confinement") in the hybrid r vacua in μ-deformed N=2 SQCD (the small-μlimit).
We give a classification of fully supersymmetric chiral ${\cal N}=(8,0)$ AdS$_3$ vacua in general three-dimensional half-maximal gauged supergravities coupled to matter. These theories exhibit a wealth of supersymmetric vacua with background isometries given by the supergroups OSp$(8|2,\mathbb{R})$, F(4), SU$(4|1,1)$, and OSp$(4^*|4)$, respectively. We identify the associated embedding tensors and the structure of the associated gauge groups. We furthermore compute the mass spectra around these vacua. As an off-spin we include results for a number of ${\cal N}=(7,0)$ vacua with supergroups OSp…
Anomalous U(1)s are omnipresent in realizations of the Standard Model using D-branes. Such models are typically non-supersymmetric, and the anomalous U(1) masses are potentially relevant for experiment. In this paper, the string calculation of anomalous U(1) masses (hep-th/0204153) is extended to non-supersymmetric orientifolds.
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 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 c…
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.
The authors of arXiv:1610.01533 have recently proposed a stronger version of the weak gravity conjecture (WGC), based on which they concluded that all those non-supersymmetric AdS vacua that can be embedded within a constistent theory of quantum gravity necessarily develop instabilities. In this paper we further elaborate on this proposal by arguing that the aforementioned instabilities have a perturbative nature and arise from the crucial interplay between the closed and the open string sectors of the theory.
We consider D-dimensional Einstein gravity coupled to two U(1) fields and a dilaton with a scalar potential. We derive the condition that the analytical AdS black holes with two independent charges can be constructed. Turning off the cosmological constant, the extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black hole emerges as the harmonic superposition of the two U(1) building blocks. With the non-vanishing cosmological constant, our extremal solutions contain the near-horizon geometry of AdS_2 x R^{D-2} with or without a hyperscaling. We also obtain the magnetic AdS_{D-2} x Y^2 vacua where Y^2 can be R^2, S^2…
We consider genuine type IIB string theory (supersymmetric) brane intersections that preserve $(1+1)$D Lorentz symmetry. We provide the full supergravity solutions in their analytic form and discuss their physical properties. The Ansatz for the spacetime dependence of the different brane warp factors goes beyond the harmonic superposition principle. By studying the associated near-horizon geometry, we construct interesting classes of AdS$_3$ vacua in type IIB and highlight their relation to the existing classifications in the literature. Finally, we discuss their holographic properties.
We study the SO(3)-invariant relevant deformations of N=4 SU(N) gauge theory using the methods of Polchinski and Strassler. We present the region of parameter space where the non-supersymmetric vacuum is still described by stable ``dielectric'' five branes within the supergravity approximation.
We show how to construct supersymmetric warped AdS$_7$ vacua of massive IIA and AdS$_6$ vacua of IIB supergravity, using "half-maximal structures" of exceptional field theory. We use this formalism to obtain the minimal consistent truncations around these AdS vacua.
We review the construction of non-supersymmetric open string vacua in various dimensions. They can be obtained either projecting the (compactified) non-supersymmetric 0B theory, or applying the Scherk-Schwarz mechanism to open strings. Generically, these vacua generate a non-vanishing cosmological constant. However, one can construct particular kinds of Scherk-Schwarz compactifications with vanishing cosmological constant, at least for low orders, based on asymmetric orbifolds. A generic feature of these models is that supersymmetry remains unbroken on the branes at all mass level, while it is…
We count the supersymmetric vacua of mass-deformed N=6 U(N)xU(N) Chern-Simons-matter theory by calculating the Witten index. When the Chern-Simons level k is 1, our result perfectly agrees with that from the gravity dual, given by partitions of N. For general k, our index generalizes partitions of N, including additional degrees. We also comment on non-relativistic superconformal theories constructed from this model.
We present a construction of modular invariant partition functions for heterotic (0,2) supersymmetric classical string vacua. This generalization of Gepner's construction yields GUT gauge groups E_6, SO(10), SU(5) and SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1)^r, respectively. By calculating the massless spectrum of some of these models we find strong indications that they correspond to (0,2) string vacua discussed recently in the context of CYM/LG phases.
We evaluate the backreaction of O6-planes in scale-separated $\text{AdS}_3$ flux vacua of massive Type IIA. Using the appropriate flux scaling we show that the corrections to the various background fields and moduli are controlled and subleading when going from smeared to localized sources. Similarly, the backreaction corrections to the scalar potential are parametrically small in the scale-separation limit, assuming always that the near-O6-plane singularities will find a resolution within string theory, even in the presence of a Romans mass. Our analysis is based on the equations of motion an…
We conjecture that all vacua in string theory decay. More precisely, non-supersymmetric vacua in string theory are at most metastable and eventually decay, while supersymmetric vacua are only marginally stable. All de Sitter vacua with small cosmological constant are metastable to decay via a process that occurs on scales small compared to the horizon size.
We classify the non-supersymmetric, and perturbatively stable within $D=4$, AdS vacua of maximal $D=4$ supergravity with a dyonic ISO(7) gauging in a large sector of the supergravity. Seven such vacua are established within this sector, all of them giving rise to non-supersymmetric $\textrm{AdS}_{4} \times \textrm{S}^{6}$ type IIA backgrounds with and without non-trivial warpings and with internal fluxes. Then, we analyse the dynamics of various probe D$p$-branes in these backgrounds searching for potential brane-jet instabilities. In all these cases, such instabilities are absent. Finally, an…
Exact black hole solutions of the five dimensional heterotic $S$-$T$-$U$ model including all perturbative quantum corrections and preserving $1/2$ of $N=2$ supersymmetry are studied. It is shown that the quantum corrections yield a bound on electric charges and harmonic functions of the solutions.
It has recently been conjectured that string theory does not admit de Sitter critical points. This note points out that in several cases, including KKLT or racetrack models, this statement is equivalent to the absence of supersymmetric Minkowski or AdS solutions. This equivalence arises from establishing the positivity of the potential in a large-radius limit, requiring a turnover of the potential before reaching an AdS vacuum. For example, this conjecture is incompatible with the simplest 1-modulus KKLT AdS supersymmetric solution.
Following a suggestion made by Tseytlin, we investigate the case when one replaces the transverse part of the bosonic action by an $n=2$ supersymmetric sigma-model with a symmetric homogeneous Kählerian target space. As conjectured by Tseytlin, the metric is shown to be exactly known since the beta function is known to reduce to its one-loop value.
We ask the question of classical integrability for certain (classes of) supergravity vacua that contain an AdS$_3$ factor arising in massive IIA and IIB theories and realizing various and different amounts of supersymmetry. Our approach is based on a well-established method of analytic non-integrability for Hamiltonian systems. To detect a non-integrable sector we consider a non-trivially wrapped string soliton and study its fluctuations. We answer in the negative for each and every one of the supergravity solutions. That is, of course, modulo very specific limits where the metrics reduce to t…
We provide explicit formulas for the number of vacua of four-dimensional pure N=1 super Yang-Mills theories on a circle, with any simple gauge algebra and any choice of center and spectrum of line operators. These form a key ingredient in the semi-classical calculation of the number of massive vacua of N=1* gauge theories with gauge algebra su(n) compactified on a circle. Using arithmetic, we express that number in an SL(2,Z) duality invariant manner. We confirm our tally of massive vacua of the N=1* theories by a count of inequivalent extrema of the exact superpotential. Furthermore, we compu…
Making use of non-perturbative U-duality symmetries of type II strings we construct new `superstring' vacua in three dimensions with N=1 supersymmetry. This has an interpretation as compactifying formally from 13 dimensions (S-theory) on Calabi-Yau 5-folds possessing a $T^3 \x T^2$ fibration. We describe some part of the massless multiplets, given by the Hodge spectrum, and point to a corresponding 5-brane configuration.
We construct a generalization of Witten's Kaluza-Klein instanton, where a higher-dimensional sphere (rather than a circle as in Witten's instanton) collapses to zero size and the geometry terminates at a bubble of nothing, in a low energy effective theory of M theory. We use the solution to exhibit instability of non-supersymmetric AdS_5 vacua in M Theory compactified on positive Kaehler-Einstein spaces, providing a further evidence for the recent conjecture that any non-supersymmetric anti-de Sitter vacuum supported by fluxes must be unstable.
We analyze non-supersymmetric four dimensional open string models of type IIB string theory compactified on $T^2\times K3$ with Scherk-Schwarz deformation acting on an $S^1$ of the $T^2$ torus. We find that there are always two solutions to the tadpole conditions that are shown to be connected via Wilson lines in an non-trivial way. These models although non-supersymmetric, are free of R-R and NS-NS tadpoles.
