Metastable Flux Configurations and de Sitter Spaces

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability of flux configurations in type IIB string theory compactifications, exploring conditions for metastability and moduli stabilization, including non-geometric backgrounds and the potential for de Sitter spaces.

Contribution

It derives stability conditions for critical points of the scalar potential and demonstrates moduli stabilization in non-geometric backgrounds without orientifold projections.

Findings

Stability conditions for critical points are established.

Complex structure moduli can be stabilized using H_{RR} flux alone.

Full moduli stabilization at weak coupling may require supersymmetry breaking.

Abstract

We derive stability conditions for the critical points of the no-scale scalar potential governing the dynamics of the complex structure moduli and the axio-dilaton in compactifications of type IIB string theory on Calabi-Yau three-folds. We discuss a concrete example of a T^6 orientifold. We then consider the four-dimensional theory obtained from compactifications of type IIB string theory on non-geometric backgrounds which are mirror to rigid Calabi-Yau manifolds and show that the complex structure moduli fields can be stabilized in terms of H_{RR} only, i.e. with no need of orientifold projection. The stabilization of all the fields at weak coupling, including the axio-dilaton, may require to break supersymmetry in the presence of H_{NS} flux or corrections to the scalar potential.