The cosmological constant and the weak gravity conjecture

A bstract We examine the descent via membrane nucleation through a landscape of vacua where the cosmological constant is given by a combination of four-form fluxes. It has been shown that this descent can be slowed exponentially for very low curvature vacua close to Minkowski space in a wide class o...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe journal of high energy physics Vol. 2024; no. 8; pp. 48 - 22
Main Authors Liu, Yang, Padilla, Antonio, Pedro, Francisco G.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 06.08.2024
Springer Nature B.V
SpringerOpen
Subjects
Astronomical models
Classical and Quantum Gravitation
Cosmological constant
Cosmological models
Dark energy
Elementary Particles
Gravity
Membranes
Minkowski space
Nucleation
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Quantum Field Theories
Quantum Field Theory
Quantum Physics
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Relativity Theory
String and Brane Phenomenology
String Theory
Universe
Cosmological models
String and Brane Phenomenology
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:A bstract We examine the descent via membrane nucleation through a landscape of vacua where the cosmological constant is given by a combination of four-form fluxes. It has been shown that this descent can be slowed exponentially for very low curvature vacua close to Minkowski space in a wide class of models satisfying certain parametric conditions, providing a possible solution to the cosmological constant problem. We explore in detail whether or not those parametric conditions are compatible with the membrane weak gravity conjecture. Whilst it is true that there is often tension, we show that this is not always the case and present an explicit model where Minkowski space is absolutely stable and the weak gravity conjecture is satisfied. This corresponds to an extension of the Bousso-Polchinski model into a generalised DBI action for four-forms. We also clarify how the landscape should be populated in a consistent model.
ISSN:1029-8479
1029-8479
DOI:10.1007/JHEP08(2024)048