Evidence for a bound on the lifetime of de Sitter space

TL;DR

This paper examines a proposed upper limit on the lifetime of de Sitter spaces in string theory, confirming that KKLT vacua adhere to this bound despite their potential for long stability.

Contribution

It provides evidence that the lifetime of KKLT de Sitter vacua respects the recently proposed universal bound, even with tunable supersymmetry breaking scales.

Findings

KKLT vacua lifetime is less than about exp(10^(22)) Hubble times

The bound is satisfied despite the ability to make supersymmetry breaking scale very small

Supports the conjectured universal upper limit on de Sitter space lifetime

Abstract

Recent work has suggested a surprising new upper bound on the lifetime of de Sitter vacua in string theory. The bound is parametrically longer than the Hubble time but parametrically shorter than the recurrence time. We investigate whether the bound is satisfied in a particular class of de Sitter solutions, the KKLT vacua. Despite the freedom to make the supersymmetry breaking scale exponentially small, which naively would lead to extremely stable vacua, we find that the lifetime is always less than about exp(10^(22)) Hubble times, in agreement with the proposed bound.