A swamp of non-SUSY vacua

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability of known non-supersymmetric AdS solutions from massive type IIA supergravity, revealing that open-string modes often violate stability bounds, which impacts the viability of such string theory models.

Contribution

It provides a detailed stability analysis of non-SUSY AdS vacua, including open-string effects, and discusses implications for the Weak Gravity Conjecture and string theory constructions.

Findings

Open strings often develop modes below the BF bound.

Non-SUSY AdS solutions are generally unstable due to open-string excitations.

Analysis informs the validity of non-supersymmetric string models.

Abstract

We consider known examples of non-supersymmetric AdS$_7$ and AdS$_4$ solutions arising from compactifications of massive type IIA supergravity and study their stability, taking into account the coupling between closed- and open-string sector excitations. Generically, open strings are found to develop modes with masses below the Breitenlohner-Freedman (BF) bound. We comment on the relation with the Weak Gravity Conjecture, and how this analysis may play an important role in examining the validity of non-supersymmetric constructions in string theory.