A new class of de Sitter vacua in type IIB large volume compactifications

Abstract

We construct a new class of metastable de Sitter vacua of flux compactifications of type IIB string theory. These solutions provide a natural extension of the ‘Large Volume Scenario’ anti-de Sitter vacua, and can analogously be realised at parametrically large volume and weak string coupling, using standard N$$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 1 supergravity. For these new vacua, a positive vacuum energy is achieved from the inclusion of a small amount of flux-induced supersymmetry breaking in the complex structure and axio-dilaton sector, and no additional ‘uplift’ contribution (e.g. from anti-branes) is required. We show that the approximate no-scale structure of the effective theory strongly influences the spectrum of the stabilised moduli: one complex structure modulus remains significantly lighter than the supersymmetry breaking scale, and metastability requires only modest amounts of tuning. After discussing these general results, we provide a recipe for constructing de Sitter vacua on a given compactification manifold, and give an explicit example of a de Sitter vacuum for the compactification on the Calabi-Yau orientifold realised in ℂℙ111694$$ \mathbb{C}{\mathrm{\mathbb{P}}}_{11169}^4 $$. Finally, we note that these solutions have intriguing implications for phenomenology, predicting no csuperpartners in the spectrum below ∼50 TeV, and no WIMP dark matter.