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1. Universal properties of Kaluza-Klein gravitons

   https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP03(2020)039  

   Dimmitt, Kevin; Larios, Gabriel; Ntokos, Praxitelis; Varela, Oscar (March 2020, Journal of High Energy Physics)

   null (Ed.)

   A bstract Vacua of different gaugings of D = 4 $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 8 supergravity that preserve the same supersymmetries and bosonic symmetry tend to exhibit the same universal mass spectrum within their respective supergravities. For AdS 4 vacua in gauged supergravities that arise upon consistent truncation of string/M-theory, we show that this universality is lost at higher Kaluza-Klein levels. However, universality is still maintained in a milder form, at least in the graviton sector: certain sums over a finite number of states remain universal. Further, we derive a mass matrix for Kaluza-Klein gravitons which is valid for all the AdS 4 vacua in string/M-theory that uplift from the gaugings of D = 4 $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 8 supergravity that we consider. The mild universality of graviton mass sums is related to the trace of this mass matrix. 

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2. New non-supersymmetric flux vacua in string theory

   https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP12(2023)145  

   Krippendorf, S; Schachner, A (December 2023, Journal of High Energy Physics)

   A<sc>bstract</sc> In this note we construct large ensembles of supersymmetry breaking solutions arising in the context of flux compactifications of type IIB string theory. This class of solutions was previously proposed in [1] for which we provide the first explicit examples in Calabi-Yau orientifold compactifications with discrete fluxes below their respective tadpole constraint. As a proof of concept, we study the degree 18 hypersurface in weighted projective space$$ \mathbbm{CP} $$ $\mathrm{CP}$_1,1,1,6,9. Furthermore, we look at 10 additional orientifolds withh^1,2= 2,3. We find several flux vacua with hierarchical suppression of the vacuum energy with respect to the gravitino mass. These solutions provide a crucial stepping stone for the construction of explicit de Sitter vacua in string theory. Lastly, we also report the difference in the distribution ofW₀between supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric minima. 

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3. Non-supersymmetric AdS from string theory

   https://doi.org/10.21468/SciPostPhys.15.6.224  

   Baykara, Zihni Kaan; Robbins, Daniel; Sethi, Savdeep (January 2023, SciPost Physics)

   We construct non-supersymmetric AdS3 solutions of the O(16)xO(16) heterotic string. Most of the backgrounds have a classical worldsheet definition but are quantum string vacua in the sense that string loop corrections change the curvature of spacetime. At one-loop, the change in the cosmological constant is positive but never sufficient to uplift to de Sitter space. By computing the spectrum of spacetime scalars, we show that there are no tachyons below the BF bound. We also show that there is a solution with no spacetime NS-NS flux. This background has no classical string limit. Surprisingly, there appears to be parametric control over these constructions, which provide a framework for exploring quantum gravity and holography without supersymmetry. 

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4. Fluxes, vacua, and tadpoles meet Landau-Ginzburg and Fermat

   https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP12(2022)083  

   Becker, Katrin; Gonzalo, Eduardo; Walcher, Johannes; Wrase, Timm (December 2022, Journal of High Energy Physics)

   A bstract Type IIB flux vacua based on Landau-Ginzburg models without Kähler deformations provide fully-controlled insights into the non-geometric and strongly-coupled string landscape. We show here that supersymmetric flux configurations at the Fermat point of the 1 9 model, which were found long-time ago to saturate the orientifold tadpole, leave a number of massless fields, which however are not all flat directions of the superpotential at higher order. More generally, the rank of the Hessian of the superpotential is compatible with a suitably formulated tadpole conjecture for all fluxes that we found. Moreover, we describe new infinite families of supersymmetric 4d $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 1 Minkowski and AdS vacua and confront them with several other swampland conjectures. 

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5. JAXVacua — a framework for sampling string vacua

   https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP12(2023)146  

   Dubey, A; Krippendorf, S; Schachner, A (December 2023, Journal of High Energy Physics)

   A<sc>bstract</sc> Moduli stabilisation in string compactifications with many light scalars remains a major blind-spot in the string landscape. In these regimes, analytic methods cease to work for generic choices of UV parameters which is why numerical techniques have to be exploited. In this paper, we implement algorithms based on JAX, heavily utilising automatic differentiation, just-in-time compilation and parallelisation features, to efficiently construct string vacua. This implementation provides a golden opportunity to efficiently analyse large unexplored regions of the string landscape. As a first example, we apply our techniques to the search of Type IIB flux vacua in Calabi-Yau orientifold compactifications. We argue that our methods only scale mildly with the Hodge numbers making exhaustive studies of low energy effective field theories with$$ \mathcal{O} $$ $O$(100) scalar fields feasible. Using small computing resources, we are able to construct$$ \mathcal{O} $$ $O$(10⁶) flux vacua per geometry withh^1,2≥ 2, vastly out-performing previous systematic searches. In particular, we showcase the efficiency of our methods by presenting generic vacua with fluxes below the tadpole constraint set by the orientifold with up toh^1,2= 25 complex structure moduli. 

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