Disorder on the landscape

Abstract

Disorder on the string theory landscape may significantly affect dynamics of eternalinflation leading to the possibility for some vacua on the landscape to become dynamicallypreferable over others. We systematically study effects of a generic disorder on thelandscape, starting by identifying a sector with built-in disorder—a set of de Sitter vacuacorresponding to compactifications of the type IIB string theory on Calabi–Yau manifoldswith a number of warped Klebanov–Strassler throats attached randomly to the bulk part ofthe Calabi–Yau. Further, we derive a continuum limit of the vacuum dynamics equationson the landscape. Using methods of the dynamical renormalization group we determine thelate-time behavior of the probability distribution for an observer to measure agiven value of the cosmological constant. We find the diffusion of the probabilitydistribution to significantly slow down in sectors of the landscape where the number ofnearest-neighboring vacua for any given vacuum is small. We discuss the relationof this slowdown with the phenomenon of Anderson localization in disorderedmedia.