Vacua Morghulis

January 23, 2017
3:00pm to 4:00pm

IFT Seminar Room/Red Room

Specialist level
Speaker: 
Ben Freivogel
Institution: 
U. Amsterdam
Location&Place: 

IFT Seminar Room/Red Room

Abstract: 
We conjecture that all vacua in string theory decay. More precisely, non-supersymmetric
vacua in string theory are at most metastable and eventually decay, while supersymmetric vacua are only marginally stable. All de Sitter vacua with small cosmological
constant are metastable to decay via a process that occurs on scales small compared to the horizon size.