Runaway in the Landscape

TL;DR

This paper investigates flux compactifications in type IIB string theory, discovering new AdS solutions at large complex structure and highlighting the challenges of stabilizing all moduli in Minkowski vacua at strong coupling.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of new weak coupling AdS solutions and analyzes the conditions for Minkowski solutions with all moduli stabilized, extending understanding of flux vacua.

Findings

New weak coupling AdS solutions at large complex structure

Minkowski solutions with all moduli stabilized are at strong coupling

Supersymmetric runaway directions may have moduli masses down to the AdS scale

Abstract

We consider flux compactifications of type IIB string theory on the mirror of a rigid Calabi-Yau. In special cases, these models are dual to the type IIA flux vacua with runaway direction in flux space. We show that new weak coupling AdS solutions can be found for large complex structure, while Minkowski solutions with all moduli stabilized are confined to be at strong coupling. The existence of these solutions, as found in a previous work, is nevertheless guaranteed by a non-renormalization theorem of the type IIB flux superpotential. Based on our results, we are led to the conjecture that supersymmetric runaway directions in flux space are always accompanied by a spectrum of moduli masses reaching down to the AdS scale. This could be violated in a non-supersymmetric situation.