De Sitter vs Quintessence in String Theory

By M. Cicoli, Senarath de Alwis, Anshuman Maharana, F. Muia, F. Quevedo. Fortschritte der Physik, 2018

212 citations recorded by the source corpus.

De Sitter solutions have been recently conjectured to be incompatible with quantum gravity. In this paper we critically assess the progress and challenges of different mechanisms to obtain de Sitter vacua in string compactifications and compare them to quintessence models. We argue that, despite recent criticisms, de Sitter models reached a level of concreteness and calculational control which has been improving over time. On the other hand, building string models of quintessence appears to be more challenging and requires additional fine‐tuning. We discuss the tension between the swampland conjecture and the Higgs potential and find examples which can evade fifth‐force bounds even if they seem very hard to realise in string theory. We also comment on the tension with low‐redshift data and explore ultra‐light axions from string theory as dark energy candidates.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ee11ede46295b31e50501a452bc9d0d74afc6c01

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Eran Palti
2. I. Valenzuela
3. Delaram Mirfendereski
4. J. Calderón-Infante
5. Marieke van Beest
6. Gary Shiu
7. Pablo Soler

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Eran Palti
2. I. Valenzuela
3. Delaram Mirfendereski
4. J. Calderón-Infante
5. Marieke van Beest
6. Gary Shiu

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

1. I. Valenzuela
2. Delaram Mirfendereski
3. J. Calderón-Infante
4. Marieke van Beest
5. Eran Palti

Citations in the corpus

• The Swampland: Introduction and Review (2019, background): “The cosmological bounds from dark energy on the de Sitter conjecture were further developed in [562–567], and on the refined de Sitter conjecture in [171,568–571].”
• Lectures on the Swampland Program in String Compactifications (2021, background): “For reviews about the status of de Sitter vacua in string theory we refer the reader to [105,106].”