On the Explicit Construction and Statistics of Calabi-Yau Flux Vacua

We explicitly construct and study the statistics of flux vacua for type IIB string theory on an orientifold of the Calabi-Yau hypersurface $P^4_{[1,1,2,2,6]}$, parametrised by two relevant complex structure moduli. We solve for these moduli and the dilaton field in terms of the set of integers defining the 3-form fluxes and examine the distribution of vacua. We compare our numerical results with the predictions of the Ashok-Douglas density $\det (-R - \omega)$, finding good overall agreement in different regions of moduli space. The number of vacua are found to scale with the distance in flux space. Vacua cluster in the region close to the conifold singularity. Large supersymmetry breaking is more generic but supersymmetric and hierarchical supersymmetry breaking vacua can also be obtained. In particular, the small superpotentials and large dilaton VEVs needed to obtain de Sitter space in a controllable approximation are possible but not generic. We argue that in a general flux compactification, the rank of the gauge group coming from D3 branes could be statistically preferred to be very small.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures; v2: references adde

Quasinormal Modes of Charged Scalars around Dilaton Black Holes in 2+1 Dimensions: Exact Frequencies

We have studied the charged scalar perturbation around a dilaton black hole in 2 +1 dimensions. The wave equations of a massless charged scalar field is shown to be exactly solvable in terms of hypergeometric functions. The quasinormal frequencies are computed exactly. The relation between the quasinormal frequencies and the charge of the black hole, charge of the scalar and the temperature of the black hole are analyzed. The asymptotic form of the real part of the quasinormal frequencies are evaluated exactly.Comment: 20 pages and 7 figures, some references are added and some removed. There are some changes to the text. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:hep-th/040716

Dark Radiation in LARGE Volume Models

We consider reheating driven by volume modulus decays in the LARGE Volume Scenario. Such reheating always generates non-zero dark radiation through the decays to the axion partner, while the only competitive visible sector decays are Higgs pairs via the Giudice-Masiero term. In the framework of sequestered models where the cosmological moduli problem is absent, the simplest model with a shift-symmetric Higgs sector generates 1.56 < N_{eff} - N_{eff,SM} < 1.74. For more general cases, the known experimental bounds on N_{eff} strongly constrain the parameters and matter content of the models.Comment: 6 pages; v2. refs update