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This paper explores the process of vacuum decay in supersymmetric models related to flux compactifications. In particular, we describe these instabilities within supersymmetric Lagrangians for a single three-form multiplet. This multiplet combines scalar fields, representing the moduli fields in four dimensions, with 3-form fields that influence the potential for these moduli via the integer flux of their associated 4-form field strength. Furthermore, using supersymmetry as a guide we obtain the form of the couplings of these fields to the membranes that act as sources to the 3-form potentials. Adding small supersymmetry breaking terms to these Lagrangians one can obtain instanton solutions describing the decay of the vacua in these models by the formation of a membrane bubble. These instantons combine the usual Coleman-de Luccia and the Brown-Teitelboim formalisms in a single unified model. We study simple numerical examples of theories with and without gravity in this new framework and generalize known Euclidean methods to accomodate the simulataneous inclusion of scalar fields and charged membranes to these instanton solutions. Moreover, we show explicitly in these examples how one recovers the static supersymmetric solutions in the limiting case where the supersymmetry breaking terms vanish. In this limit, the bubble becomes infinite and flat and represents a hybrid between the usual supersymmetric domain walls of field theory models and the brane solutions interpolating between the supersymmetric vacua; a sort of dressed supermembrane BPS solution. Finally, we briefly comment on the implications of these solutions in cosmological models based on the String Theory Landscape where these type of 4d effective theories could be relevant in inflationary scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of type IIB flux vacua on warped Calabi-Yau orientifolds becomes considerably involved for a large number of complex structure fields. We however show that, for a quadratic flux superpotential, one can devise simplifying schemes which effectively reduce the large number of equations down to a few. This can be achieved by imposing the vanishing of certain flux quanta in the large complex structure regime, and then choosing the remaining quanta to respect the symmetries of the underlying prepotential. One can then implement an algorithm to find large families of flux vacua with a fixed flux tadpole, independently of the number of fields. We illustrate this approach in a Calabi-Yau manifold with 51 complex structure moduli, where several reduction schemes can be implemented in order to explicitly solve the vacuum equations for that sector. Our findings display a flux-tadpole-to-stabilized-moduli ratio that is marginally above the bound proposed by the Tadpole Conjecture, and we discuss several effects that would take us below such a bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the tree-level potential of type IIB flux compactifications in warped Calabi-Yau orientifolds, in regions of weak coupling and moderately large complex structure. In this regime, one may approximate the flux-induced superpotential W by a polynomial on the axio-dilaton and complex structure fields, and a significant fraction of vacua corresponds to a quadratic W. In this quadratic case, we argue that vacua fall into three classes, for which one can push the analytic description of their features. In particular, we provide analytic expressions for the vacuum expectation values and flux-induced masses of the axio-dilaton and complex structure fields in a large subclass of vacua, independently of the Calabi-Yau and the number of moduli. We show that supersymmetric vacua always contain flat directions, at least at this level of approximation. Our findings allow to generate vast ensembles of flux vacua in specific Calabi-Yau geometries, as we illustrate in a particular example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large number of moduli fields arising in a generic string theory compactification makes a complete computation of the low energy effective theory infeasible. A common strategy to solve this problem is to consider Calabi-Yau manifolds with discrete symmetries, which effectively reduce the number of moduli and make the computation of the truncated Effective Field Theory possible. In this approach, however, the couplings (e.g., the masses) of the truncated fields are left undetermined. In the present paper we discuss the tree-level mass spectrum of type-IIB flux compactifications at Large Complex Structure, focusing on models with a reduced one-dimensional complex structure sector. We compute the tree-level spectrum for the dilaton and complex structure moduli, including the truncated fields, which can be expressed entirely in terms of the known couplings of the reduced theory. We show that the masses of this set of fields are naturally heavy at vacua consistent with the KKLT construction, and we discuss other phenomenologically interesting scenarios where the spectrum involves fields much lighter than the gravitino. We also derive the probability distribution for the masses on the ensemble of flux vacua, and show that it exhibits universal features independent of the details of the compactification. We check our results on a large sample of flux vacua constructed in an orientifold of the Calabi-Yau W ℙ 1 1 1 1 4 4 . Finally, we also discuss the conditions under which the spectrum derived here could arise in more general compactifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenologically interesting scalar potentials are highly atypical in generic random landscapes. We develop the mathematical techniques to generate constrained random potentials, i.e. Slepian models, which can globally represent low-probability realizations of the landscape. We give analytical as well as numerical methods to construct these Slepian models for constrained realizations of a full Gaussian random field around critical as well as inflection points. We use these techniques to numerically generate in an efficient way a large number of minima at arbitrary heights of the potential and calculate their non-perturbative decay rate. Furthermore, we also illustrate how to use these methods by obtaining statistical information about the distribution of observables in an inflationary inflection point constructed within these models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]