Stringy corrections to Kahler potentials, SUSY breaking, and the cosmological constant problem

TL;DR

Stringy corrections to Kahler potentials in IIB string theory can modify the scalar potential, enabling non-supersymmetric and metastable de Sitter vacua, offering a potential solution to the cosmological constant problem.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that stringy corrections significantly alter the Kahler potential, allowing for non-supersymmetric vacua and providing insights into the cosmological constant problem.

Findings

Stringy corrections can induce metastable de Sitter vacua.

Corrections allow for a small cosmological constant scale.

Effective potential structure is qualitatively changed at large volume.

Abstract

The moduli of N=1 compactifications of IIB string theory can be stabilized by a combination of fluxes (which freeze complex structure moduli and the dilaton) and nonperturbative superpotentials (which freeze Kahler moduli), typically leading to supersymmetric AdS vacua. We show that stringy corrections to the Kahler potential qualitatively alter the structure of the effective scalar potential even at large volume, and can give rise to non-supersymmetric vacua including metastable de Sitter spacetimes. Our results suggest an approach to solving the cosmological constant problem, so that the scale of the 1-loop corrected cosmological constant can be much smaller than the scale of supersymmetry breaking.