Decay of flux vacua to nothing

TL;DR

This paper constructs instanton solutions that describe the decay of flux compactifications in a 6D gauge theory, generalizing the bubble of nothing concept to include smooth magnetically charged branes, affecting various vacua geometries.

Contribution

It introduces a new class of bubble of nothing solutions involving smooth magnetically charged branes in 6D flux compactifications, extending previous models.

Findings

Constructed instanton solutions for flux decay.

Described bubble geometries for different vacua.

Showed bubbles occur where a two-sphere degenerates.

Abstract

We construct instanton solutions describing the decay of flux compactifications of a $6d$ gauge theory by generalizing the Kaluza-Klein bubble of nothing. The surface of the bubble is described by a smooth magnetically charged solitonic brane whose asymptotic flux is precisely that responsible for stabilizing the 4d compactification. We describe several instances of bubble geometries for the various vacua occurring in a $6d$ Einstein-Maxwell theory namely, AdS_4 x S^2, R^{1,3} x S^2, and dS_4 x S^2. Unlike conventional solutions, the bubbles of nothing introduced here occur where a {\em two}-sphere compactification manifold homogeneously degenerates.