signature=577f630fb15e3c59338fffb9bca5a98c,Taxonomy of flux vacua.

摘要：

It is an important problem to understand the effects which stabilize moduli in quasi-realistic string compactifications. Stabilized compactifications likely provide the correct setting both for stringy models of early universe cosmology, and for string-based models of particle phenomenology. In addition, the properties of the set of such vacua (perhaps endowed with a preferred cosmological measure) may suggest new predictions, or at least possible interesting phenomenological signatures, of string theory.;In my thesis I study properties of flux vacua in type IIB string theory in several simple but illustrative models. I (in collaboration with my thesis advisor, Shamit Kachru and colleagues) initiate the study of the relative frequencies of vacua with vanishing superpotential W=0 and with certain discrete symmetries. For the models I investigate I also compute the overall rate of growth of the number of vacua as a function of the D3-brane charge associated to the fluxes, and the distribution of vacua on the moduli space. The latter two questions can also be addressed by the statistical theory developed by Ashok, Denef and Douglas, and our results are in good agreement with their predictions. Analysis of the first two questions requires methods which are more number-theoretic in nature. I develop some elementary techniques of this type, which are based on arithmetic properties of the periods of the compactification geometry at the points in moduli space where the flux vacua are located.;In addition to this I demonstrate that flux compactifications of type IIA string theory can classically stabilize all geometric moduli. For a particular orientifold background, I explicitly construct an infinite family of supersymmetric vacua with all moduli stabilized at arbitrarily large volume, weak coupling, and small negative cosmological constant. I obtain these solutions from both ten-dimensional and four-dimensional perspectives. For more general backgrounds, I study the equations for supersymmetric vacua coming from the effective superpotential and show that all geometric moduli can be stabilized by fluxes. I comment on the resulting picture of statistics on the landscape of vacua.

展开