Quantization of four form fluxes and dynamical neutralization of the cosmological constant
Apr, 200029 pages
Published in:
- JHEP 06 (2000) 006
e-Print:
- hep-th/0004134 [hep-th]
Report number:
- SU-ITP-00-12,
- NSF-ITP-00-40
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Abstract:
A four-form gauge flux makes a variable contribution to the cosmological constant. This has often been assumed to take continuous values, but we argue that it has a generalized Dirac quantization condition. For a single flux the steps are much larger than the observational limit, but we show that with multiple fluxes the allowed values can form a sufficiently dense `discretuum'. Multiple fluxes generally arise in M theory compactifications on manifolds with non-trivial three-cycles. In theories with large extra dimensions a few four-forms suffice; otherwise of order 100 are needed. Starting from generic initial conditions, the repeated nucleation of membranes dynamically generates regions with a cosmological constant in the observational range. Entropy and density perturbations can be produced.- gravitation
- differential forms
- flux: gauge
- flux: quantization
- cosmological constant
- membrane model
- M-theory
- compactification
- inflaton
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