Disorder on the landscape

TL;DR

This paper investigates how disorder in the string theory landscape influences eternal inflation dynamics, revealing that disorder can slow vacuum transitions and potentially lead to localization effects similar to Anderson localization.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic study of disorder effects in the string landscape, deriving continuum equations and analyzing late-time probability distributions using renormalization group methods.

Findings

Disorder causes significant slowdown in vacuum transition dynamics.

Probability distribution diffusion is slowed in regions with fewer neighboring vacua.

Potential localization phenomena analogous to Anderson localization are discussed.

Abstract

Disorder on the string theory landscape may significantly affect dynamics of eternal inflation leading to the possibility for some vacua on the landscape to become dynamically preferable over others. We systematically study effects of a generic disorder on the landscape starting by identifying a sector with built-in disorder -- a set of de Sitter vacua corresponding to compactifications of the Type IIB string theory on Calabi-Yau manifolds with a number of warped Klebanov-Strassler throats attached randomly to the bulk part of the Calabi-Yau. Further, we derive continuum limit of the vacuum dynamics equations on the landscape. Using methods of dynamical renormalization group we determine the late time behavior of the probability distribution for an observer to measure a given value of the cosmological constant. We find the diffusion of the probability distribution to significantly slow down in sectors of the landscape where the number of nearest neighboring vacua for any given vacuum is small. We discuss relation of this slow-down with phenomenon of Anderson localization in disordered media.