Vacua Morghulis

TL;DR

This paper conjectures that all string theory vacua are unstable or metastable, with non-supersymmetric vacua decaying over time and even small de Sitter vacua being metastable, impacting the understanding of string landscape stability.

Contribution

It proposes a universal decay conjecture for all string theory vacua, highlighting the instability of non-supersymmetric and certain de Sitter vacua.

Findings

Non-supersymmetric vacua are at most metastable.

Supersymmetric vacua are marginally stable.

Small cosmological constant de Sitter vacua are metastable.

Abstract

We conjecture that all vacua in string theory decay. More precisely, non-supersymmetric vacua in string theory are at most metastable and eventually decay, while supersymmetric vacua are only marginally stable. All de Sitter vacua with small cosmological constant are metastable to decay via a process that occurs on scales small compared to the horizon size.