skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


This content will become publicly available on February 1, 2026

Title: Axion minima in string theory
A<sc>bstract</sc> We study the landscape of axion theories in compactifications of type IIB string theory on orientifolds of Calabi-Yau threefolds. In a sample of approximately 400,000 geometries we find that in the regime of perturbative control there are only a handful of distinct axion minima per geometry, despite there being infinitely many instanton contributions to the potential with unbounded charges. The ensemble we consider has numbers of axion fields ranging from 1 to 491, but the median number of distinct minima is 1, the mean number is 1.9 and the largest is 54. These small numbers of minima occur because the leading axion charge matrix is quite sparse, while the subleading corrections are increasingly exponentially suppressed as the charges increase. On their own, such potentials are nowhere near rich enough to be of interest anthropically. This is in stark contrast to potentials for which the charge matrix is less sparse or the hierarchies between the instanton contributions are less steep, where one can find$$ \mathcal{O}\left({10}^{500}\right) $$ O 10 500 minima for$$ \mathcal{O}(500) $$ O 500 axions. To generate a sufficiently large landscape from string compactifications our results indicate that one would need to rely on varying flux or topology, or to develop tools that allow one to go beyond the regime we can control with current techniques.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2112839 2412899
PAR ID:
10655209
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Springer Science
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of High Energy Physics
Volume:
2025
Issue:
2
ISSN:
1029-8479
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. A<sc>bstract</sc> In this paper we explorepp→W±(ℓ±ν)γto$$ \mathcal{O}\left(1/{\Lambda}^4\right) $$ O 1 / Λ 4 in the SMEFT expansion. Calculations to this order are necessary to properly capture SMEFT contributions that grow with energy, as the interference between energy-enhanced SMEFT effects at$$ \mathcal{O}\left(1/{\Lambda}^2\right) $$ O 1 / Λ 2 and the Standard Model is suppressed. We find that there are several dimension eight operators that interfere with the Standard Model and lead to the same energy growth, ~$$ \mathcal{O}\left({E}^4/{\Lambda}^4\right) $$ O E 4 / Λ 4 , as dimension six squared. While energy-enhanced SMEFT contributions are a main focus, our calculation includes the complete set of$$ \mathcal{O}\left(1/{\Lambda}^4\right) $$ O 1 / Λ 4 SMEFT effects consistent with U(3)5flavor symmetry. Additionally, we include the decay of theW±→ ℓ±ν, making the calculation actually$$ \overline{q}{q}^{\prime}\to {\ell}^{\pm}\nu \gamma $$ q ¯ q ± νγ . As such, we are able to study the impact of non-resonant SMEFT operators, such as$$ \left({L}^{\dagger }{\overline{\sigma}}^{\mu }{\tau}^IL\right)\left({Q}^{\dagger }{\overline{\sigma}}^{\nu }{\tau}^IQ\right) $$ L σ ¯ μ τ I L Q σ ¯ ν τ I Q Bμν, which contribute to$$ \overline{q}{q}^{\prime}\to {\ell}^{\pm}\nu \gamma $$ q ¯ q ± νγ directly and not to$$ \overline{q}{q}^{\prime}\to {W}^{\pm}\gamma $$ q ¯ q W ± γ . We show several distributions to illustrate the shape differences of the different contributions. 
    more » « less
  2. A<sc>bstract</sc> We develop Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) predictions ofσ($$ \mathcal{GG} $$ GG →h), Γ(h→$$ \mathcal{GG} $$ GG ), Γ(h→$$ \mathcal{AA} $$ AA ) to incorporate full two loop Standard Model results at the amplitude level, in conjunction with dimension eight SMEFT corrections. We simultaneously report consistent Γ(h→$$ \overline{\Psi}\Psi $$ Ψ ¯ Ψ ) results including leading QCD corrections and dimension eight SMEFT corrections. This extends the predictions of the former processes Γ, σto a full set of corrections at$$ \mathcal{O}\left({\overline{v}}_T^2/{\varLambda}^2{\left(16{\pi}^2\right)}^2\right) $$ O v ¯ T 2 / Λ 2 16 π 2 2 and$$ \mathcal{O}\left({\overline{v}}_T^4/{\Lambda}^4\right) $$ O v ¯ T 4 / Λ 4 , where$$ {\overline{v}}_T $$ v ¯ T is the electroweak scale vacuum expectation value and Λ is the cut off scale of the SMEFT. Throughout, cross consistency between the operator and loop expansions is maintained by the use of the geometric SMEFT formalism. For Γ(h→$$ \overline{\Psi}\Psi $$ Ψ ¯ Ψ ), we include results at$$ \mathcal{O}\left({\overline{v}}_T^2/{\Lambda}^2\left(16{\pi}^2\right)\right) $$ O v ¯ T 2 / Λ 2 16 π 2 in the limit where subleadingmΨ→ 0 corrections are neglected. We clarify how gauge invariant SMEFT renormalization counterterms combine with the Standard Model counter terms in higher order SMEFT calculations when the Background Field Method is used. We also update the prediction of the total Higgs width in the SMEFT to consistently include some of these higher order perturbative effects. 
    more » « less
  3. A<sc>bstract</sc> We present a quantum M2 brane computation of the instanton prefactor in the leading non-perturbative contribution to the ABJM 3-sphere free energy at largeNand fixed levelk. Using supersymmetric localization, such instanton contribution was found earlier to take the form$$ {F}^{inst}\left(N,k\right)=-{\left({\sin}^2\frac{2\pi }{k}\right)}^{-1}\exp \left(-2\pi \sqrt{\frac{2N}{k}}\right)+.\dots $$ F inst N k = sin 2 2 π k 1 exp 2 π 2 N k + . The exponent comes from the action of an M2 brane instanton wrapped onS3/ℤk, which represents the M-theory uplift of the ℂP1instanton in type IIA string theory on AdS4× ℂP3. The IIA string computation of the leading largekterm in the instanton prefactor was recently performed in arXiv:2304.12340. Here we find that the exact value of the prefactor$$ {\left({\sin}^2\frac{2\pi }{k}\right)}^{-1} $$ sin 2 2 π k 1 is reproduced by the 1-loop term in the M2 brane partition function expanded near theS3/ℤkinstanton configuration. As in the Wilson loop example in arXiv:2303.15207, the quantum M2 brane computation is well defined and produces a finite result in exact agreement with localization. 
    more » « less
  4. 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 withh1,2≥ 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 toh1,2= 25 complex structure moduli. 
    more » « less
  5. A<sc>bstract</sc> The entanglement negativity$$ \mathcal{E} $$ E (A:B) is a useful measure of quantum entanglement in bipartite mixed states. In random tensor networks (RTNs), which are related to fixed-area states, it was found in ref. [1] that the dominant saddles computing the even Rényi negativity$$ {\mathcal{E}}^{(2k)} $$ E 2 k generically break theℤ2kreplica symmetry. This calls into question previous calculations of holographic negativity using 2D CFT techniques that assumedℤ2kreplica symmetry and proposed that the negativity was related to the entanglement wedge cross section. In this paper, we resolve this issue by showing that in general holographic states, the saddles computing$$ {\mathcal{E}}^{(2k)} $$ E 2 k indeed break theℤ2kreplica symmetry. Our argument involves an identity relating$$ {\mathcal{E}}^{(2k)} $$ E 2 k to thek-th Rényi entropy on subregionABin the doubled state$$ {\left.|{\rho}_{AB}\right\rangle}_{A{A}^{\ast }{BB}^{\ast }} $$ ρ AB A A BB , from which we see that theℤ2kreplica symmetry is broken down toℤk. Fork< 1, which includes the case of$$ \mathcal{E} $$ E (A:B) atk= 1/2, we use a modified cosmic brane proposal to derive a new holographic prescription for$$ {\mathcal{E}}^{(2k)} $$ E 2 k and show that it is given by a new saddle with multiple cosmic branes anchored to subregionsAandBin the original state. Using our prescription, we reproduce known results for the PSSY model and show that our saddle dominates over previously proposed CFT calculations neark= 1. Moreover, we argue that theℤ2ksymmetric configurations previously proposed are not gravitational saddles, unlike our proposal. Finally, we contrast holographic calculations with those arising from RTNs with non-maximally entangled links, demonstrating that the qualitative form of backreaction in such RTNs is different from that in gravity. 
    more » « less