Connecting flux vacua through scalar field excursions

Abstract

We show how flux vacua that differ from each other in flux quanta can be seen as different vacua in a single scalar potential of an enlarged field space, which resolves the separation by thin domain walls. This observation, which is motivated by the anti–de Sitter distance conjecture, allows one to compute distances between different vacua using the usual field-space metric. We verify for explicit examples such as scale-separated IIA flux vacua and the IIB Freund-Rubin vacua that the distance conjecture (for scalar fields) is satisfied and that the asymptotic directions in the enlarged field space are indeed hyperbolic. This enlarged field space contains the tachyon fields on the unstable D˜p-branes of type II string theory, which can induce the brane charges of the stable D-branes. We suggest that requiring continuous interpolations refines the cobordism conjecture and postdicts the existence of unstable D˜p-branes. Published by the American Physical Society 2024