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Stability of vacua and domain walls in supergravity and superstring theory

Conference · · AIP Conference Proceedings (American Institute of Physics); (United States)
OSTI ID:5019549
 [1]
  1. Physics Department, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6396 (United States)
We address the possibility of false vacuum decay in [ital N]=1 supergravity theories, including those corresponding to superstring vacua. By establishing a Bogomol'nyi bound for the energy density stored in the domain wall of the [ital O](4) invariant bubble, we show that supersymmetric vacua remain absolutely stable against false vacuum decay into another supersymmetric vacuum, including those from a Minkowski to an anti-deSitter (AdS) one. As a consequence, there are no compact static spherical domain walls, while on the other hand there exist planar domain walls interpolating between non-degenerate supersymmetric vacua, e.g., between Minkowski (topology R[sup 4]) and AdS [topology [ital S][sup 1]([ital time])[times]R[sup 3]([ital space])] vacua.
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-76ER03071
OSTI ID:
5019549
Report Number(s):
CONF-920837--
Conference Information:
Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings (American Institute of Physics); (United States) Journal Volume: 272:2
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English