$\alpha'$ corrections to KPV: An uplifting story

TL;DR

This paper extends the analysis of $oldsymbol{ ext{α'}}^2$ corrections to the NS5-brane in the KPV setup, proposing a new uplift mechanism for metastable vacua that overcomes previous limitations in warped throat models.

Contribution

It computes all known $oldsymbol{ ext{α'}}^2$ corrections involving curvature, gauge fields, and flux, and introduces a novel uplift mechanism using these corrections.

Findings

The corrected potential allows for arbitrarily small positive uplift.

The mechanism is effective for small warped throats, avoiding issues in KKLT and LVS.

Fine-tuning $oldsymbol{ ext{α'}}$ corrections achieves metastable vacua.

Abstract

In earlier work, the effect of $\alpha'^2$ curvature corrections on the NS5-brane responsible for the decay of anti-D3-branes in the set-up of Kachru, Pearson, and Verlinde (KPV) was considered. We extend this analysis to include all known $\alpha'^2$ corrections to the action of an abelian fivebrane which involve not just curvature but also gauge fields and flux. We compute the value of these terms at the tip of the Klebanov-Strassler throat to obtain the $\alpha'^2$ corrected potential for the NS5-brane of KPV. The resulting potential provides a novel uplifting mechanism where one can obtain metastable vacua with an arbitrarily small positive uplifting potential by fine-tuning $\alpha'$ corrections against the tree-level potential. This mechanism works for small warped throats, both in terms of size and contribution to the D3-tadpole, thereby sidestepping the issues associated with a standard deep warped throat uplift which are deadly in KKLT and, as we explicitly check, severely constraining in the Large Volume Scenario.