Weakly Coupled de Sitter Vacua with Fluxes and the Swampland

It was recently argued that the swampland distance conjecture rules out dS vacua at parametrically large field distances. We point out that this conclusion can in principle be avoided in the presence of large fluxes that are not bounded by a tadpole cancellation condition. We then study this possibility in the concrete setting of classical type IIA flux compactifications with (anti-)O6-planes, (anti-)D6-branes and/or KK monopoles and show that, nonetheless, parametrically controlled dS vacua are strongly constrained. In particular, we find that such dS vacua are ruled out at parametrically large volume and/or parametrically small string coupling. We also find obstructions in the general case where the parametrically large field is an arbitrary field combination.Comment: 27 pages. v2: references added, improved discussion in section 3.2. v3: minor changes, JHEP versio

Dynamics of warped flux compactifications with backreacting anti-branes

We revisit the effective low-energy dynamics of the volume modulus in warped flux compactifications with anti-D3-branes in order to analyze the prospects for meta-stable de Sitter vacua and brane inflation along the lines of KKLT/KKLMMT. At the level of the 10d supergravity solution, anti-branes in flux backgrounds with opposite charge are known to source singular terms in the energy densities of the bulk fluxes, which led to a debate on the consistency of such constructions in string theory. A straightforward yet non-trivial check of the singular solution is to verify that its dimensional reduction in the large-volume limit reproduces the 4d low-energy dynamics expected from known results where the anti-branes are treated as a probe. Taking into account the anti-brane backreaction in the effective scalar potential, we find that both the volume scaling and the coefficient of the anti-brane uplift term are in exact agreement with the probe potential if the singular fluxes satisfy a certain near-brane boundary condition. This condition can be tested explicitly and may thus help to decide whether flux singularities should be interpreted as pathological or benign features of flux compactifications with anti-branes. Throughout the paper, we also comment on a number of subtleties related to the proper definition of warped effective field theory with anti-branes.Comment: 10 pages. v2: comments adde

Large-Field Inflation with Multiple Axions and the Weak Gravity Conjecture

In this note, we discuss the implications of the weak gravity conjecture (WGC) for general models of large-field inflation with a large number of axions $N$. We first show that, from the bottom-up perspective, such models admit a variety of different regimes for the enhancement of the effective axion decay constant, depending on the amount of alignment and the number of instanton terms that contribute to the scalar potential. This includes regimes of no enhancement, power-law enhancement and exponential enhancement with respect to $N$. As special cases, we recover the Pythagorean enhancement of $N$-flation, the $N$ and $N^{3/2}$ enhancements derived by Bachlechner, Long and McAllister and the exponential enhancement by Choi, Kim and Yun. We then analyze which top-down constraints are put on such models from the requirement of consistency with quantum gravity. In particular, the WGC appears to imply that the enhancement of the effective axion decay constant must not grow parametrically with $N$ for $N \gg 1$. On the other hand, recent works proposed that axions might be able to violate this bound under certain circumstances. Our general expression for the enhancement allows us to translate this possibility into a condition on the number of instantons that couple to the axions. We argue that, at large $N$, models consistent with quantum gravity must either allow super-Planckian field excursions or have an enormous, possibly even exponentially large, number of dominant instanton terms in the scalar potential.Comment: 30+8 pages, 13 figures, 1 table. v2: several remarks and references added, version to appear in JHE

Transport properties controlled by a thermostat: An extended dissipative particle dynamics thermostat

We introduce a variation of the dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) thermostat that allows for controlling transport properties of molecular fluids. The standard DPD thermostat acts only on a relative velocity along the interatomic axis. Our extension includes the damping of the perpendicular components of the relative velocity, yet keeping the advantages of conserving Galilei invariance and within our error bar also hydrodynamics. This leads to a second friction parameter for tuning the transport properties of the system. Numerical simulations of a simple Lennard-Jones fluid and liquid water demonstrate a very sensitive behaviour of the transport properties, e.g., viscosity, on the strength of the new friction parameter. We envisage that the new thermostat will be very useful for the coarse-grained and adaptive resolution simulations of soft matter, where the diffusion constants and viscosity of the coarse-grained models are typically too high/low, respectively, compared to all-atom simulations.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Importance of nuclear triaxiality for electromagnetic strength, level density and neutron capture cross sections in heavy nuclei

Cross sections for neutron capture in the range of unresolved resonances are predicted simultaneously to level distances at the neutron threshold for more than 100 spin-0 target nuclei with A >70. Assuming triaxiality in nearly all these nuclei a combined parameterization for both, level density and photon strength is presented. The strength functions used are based on a global fit to IVGDR shapes by the sum of three Lorentzians adding up to the TRK sum rule and theory-based predictions for the A-dependence of pole energies and spreading widths. For the small spins reached by capture level densities are well described by only one free global parameter; a significant collective enhancement due to the deviation from axial symmetry is observed. Reliable predictions for compound nuclear reactions also outside the valley of stability as expected from the derived global parameterization are important for nuclear astrophysics and for the transmutation of nuclear waste.Comment: Contribution to the proceedings of the ERINDA workshop held at CERN in October 2013 with modification

Cosmological Constant, Near Brane Behavior and Singularities

We show that the classical cosmological constant in type II flux compactifications can be written as a sum of terms from the action of localized sources plus a specific contribution from non-trivial background fluxes. Exploiting two global scaling symmetries of the classical supergravity action, we find that the flux contribution can in many interesting cases be set to zero such that the cosmological constant is fully determined by the boundary conditions of the fields in the near-source region. This generalizes and makes more explicit previous arguments in the literature. We then discuss the problem of putting \bar{D3}-branes at the tip of the Klebanov-Strassler throat glued to a compact space in type IIB string theory so as to engineer a de Sitter solution. Our result for the cosmological constant and a simple global argument indicate that inserting a fully localized and backreacting \bar{D3}-brane into such a background yields a singular energy density for the NSNS and RR 3-form field strengths at the \bar{D3}-brane. This argument does not rely on partial smearing of the \bar{D3}-brane or a linearization of field equations, but on a few general assumptions that we also discuss carefully.Comment: 30 pages, no figures, v2: Minor modifications and references added. Version to appear in JHE

Consent bias in research: how to avoid it

See article on page 111