Giant Tachyons in the Landscape

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability of anti-D3 branes in the Klebanov-Strassler background, revealing generic tachyonic instabilities that challenge their use in constructing stable de Sitter vacua.

Contribution

It applies a non-supersymmetric Polchinski-Strassler analysis to demonstrate the instability of anti-D3 branes due to repulsive interactions in all polarization directions.

Findings

Anti-D3 branes exhibit tachyonic modes due to repulsive interactions.

Polarization into five-branes does not stabilize the branes.

Implications for the viability of anti-D3 brane uplift in de Sitter constructions.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of localized and fully backreacting anti-D3 branes at the tip of the Klebanov-Strassler geometry. We use a non-supersymmetric version of the Polchinski-Strassler analysis to compute the potential for anti-D3 branes to polarize into all kinds of five-brane shells in all possible directions. We find that generically there is a direction along which the brane-brane interaction is repulsive, which implies that anti-D3 branes are tachyonic. Hence, even though anti-D3 branes can polarize into five-branes, the solution will most likely be unstable. This indicates that anti-D3 brane uplift may not result in stable de Sitter vacua.