Exact Flux Vacua, Symmetries, and the Structure of the Landscape

TL;DR

This paper explores the structure of flux vacua in string theory, revealing how symmetries and algebraic properties influence the distribution and finiteness of vacua with stabilized moduli.

Contribution

It provides the first exact construction of flux vacua with vanishing superpotential in F-theory on Calabi-Yau fourfolds, connecting transcendentality, symmetries, and the landscape structure.

Findings

Vacua become algebraic along symmetry loci, describable via K3 surface periods.

Vacua are dense without flux bounds but finite with tadpole constraints.

Outside symmetry loci, only finitely many vacua exist with vanishing superpotential.

Abstract

Identifying flux vacua in string theory with stabilized complex structure moduli presents a significant challenge, necessitating the minimization of a scalar potential complicated by infinitely many exponential corrections. In order to obtain exact results we connect three central topics: transcendentality or algebraicity of coupling functions, emergent symmetries, and the distribution of vacua. Beginning with explicit examples, we determine the first exact landscape of flux vacua with a vanishing superpotential within F-theory compactifications on a genuine Calabi-Yau fourfold. We find that along certain symmetry loci in moduli space the generically transcendental vacuum conditions become algebraic and can be described using the periods of a K3 surface. On such loci the vacua become dense when we do not bound the flux tadpole, while imposing the tadpole bound yields a small finite landscape of distinct vacua. Away from these symmetry loci, the transcendentality of the fourfold periods ensures that there are only a finite number of vacua with a vanishing superpotential, even when the tadpole constraint is removed. These observations exemplify the general patterns emerging in the bulk of moduli space that we expose in this work. They are deeply tied to the arithmetic structure underlying flux vacua and generalize the finiteness claims about rational CFTs and rank-two attractors. From a mathematical perspective, our study is linked with the recent landmark results by Baldi, Klingler, and Ullmo about the Hodge locus that arose from connecting tame geometry and Hodge theory.