There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

[신간의 별자리x] 우리/미술, 그리고 ‘슬픔의 박물관’

The Swampland program aims to distinguish effective theories which can be completed into quantum gravity in the ultraviolet from those which cannot. This article forms an introduction to the field, assuming only a knowledge of quantum field theory and general relativity. It also forms a comprehensive review, covering the range of ideas that are part of the field, from the Weak Gravity Conjecture, through compactifications of String Theory, to the de Sitter conjecture.

The Swampland: Introduction and Review

The Swampland program aims to distinguish effective theories which can be completed into quantum gravity in the ultraviolet from those which cannot. This article forms an introduction to the field, assuming only a knowledge of quantum field theory and general relativity. It also forms a comprehensive review, covering the range of ideas that are part of the field, from the Weak Gravity Conjecture, through compactifications of String Theory, to the de Sitter conjecture.

The universe is so much bigger than the bit we can see in our observable bubble   and we know nothing about what lies out there in the cosmos. The challenge is so  much bigger than is shown on this chart and it is evident that we really only  understand a tiny fraction of the whole cosmos.  Theories ​for Dark Energy have been around for a long time but we still have no  satisfactory explanation. None of the theories are adequate, some are clearly wrong    – an error of 10^120 is a really big miss!  Scott Dodelson of Carnegie Mellon University, one of the lead scientists behind the  Dark Energy Survey’s new map of cosmic structure says:

Dark Energy

We describe a method for finding flux vacua of type IIB string theory in which the Gukov-Vafa-Witten superpotential is exponentially small. We present an example with ${W}_{0}\ensuremath{\approx}2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}8}$ on an orientifold of a Calabi-Yau hypersurface with $({h}^{1,1},{h}^{2,1})=(2,272)$, at large complex structure and weak string coupling.

Vacua with Small Flux Superpotential

We introduce a method for finding flux vacua of type IIB string theory in which the flux superpotential is exponentially small and at the same time one or more complex structure moduli are stabilized exponentially near to conifold points.

Conifold Vacua with Small Flux Superpotential

We analyze the de Sitter construction of \cite{KKLT} using ten-dimensional supergravity, finding exact agreement with the four-dimensional effective theory. Starting from the fermionic couplings in the D7-brane action, we derive the ten-dimensional stress-energy due to gaugino condensation on D7-branes. We demonstrate that upon including this stress-energy, as well as that due to anti-D3-branes, the ten-dimensional equations of motion require the four-dimensional curvature to take precisely the value determined by the four-dimensional effective theory of \cite{KKLT}.

Manki Kim

Papers

Vacua with Small Flux Superpotential

Conifold Vacua with Small Flux Superpotential

de Sitter Vacua from Ten Dimensions

Conifold Vacua with Small Flux Superpotential

Exponentially Small Cosmological Constant in String Theory