Effective Potentials for Light Moduli

TL;DR

This paper critiques the standard method of deriving effective potentials for light moduli in string compactifications, revealing additional terms that can influence the stability and physics of the models, including the possibility of metastable de Sitter minima without uplifting.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the common two-stage procedure for deriving effective potentials is invalid and provides the corrected potential with additional terms.

Findings

The correct potential includes additional terms not captured by the standard method.

These additional terms can alter the stability analysis of moduli.

Metastable de Sitter minima can exist without uplifting, contrary to previous assumptions.

Abstract

We examine recent work on compactifications of string theory with fluxes, where effective potentials for light moduli have been derived after integrating out moduli that are assumed to be heavy at the classical level, and then adding non-perturbative (NP) corrections to the superpotential. We find that this two stage procedure is not valid and that the correct potential has additional terms. Althought this does not affect the conclusion of Kachru et al (KKLT) that the Kaehler moduli may be stabilized by NP effects, it can affect the detailed physics. In particular it is possible to get metastable dS minima without adding uplifting terms.