Lifetime of Stringy de Sitter Vacua

TL;DR

This paper reviews the decay lifetimes of certain string/M-theory de Sitter vacua, showing they are exponentially long-lived if their cosmological constant is small and supersymmetry breaking scale exceeds TeV.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of vacuum decay times for various string/M-theory de Sitter constructions with a single minimum and no other local minima after uplifting.

Findings

Vacua decay via Coleman--De Luccia instantons towards Minkowski minima.

Decay times are exponentially long for small cosmological constants.

Stability depends on small cosmological constant and supersymmetry breaking scale > TeV.

Abstract

In this note we perform a synopsis of the life-times from vacuum decay of several de Sitter vacuum constructions in string/M-theory which have a single dS minimum arising from lifting a pre-existing AdS extremum and no other local minima existent after lifting. For these vacua the decay proceeds via a Coleman--De Luccia instanton towards the universal Minkowski minimum at infinite volume. This can be calculated using the thin--wall approximation, provided the cosmological constant of the local dS minimum is tuned sufficiently small. We compare the estimates for the different model classes and find them all stable in the sense of exponentially long life times as long as they have a very small cosmological constant and a scale of supersymmetry breaking > TeV.