Stringy Bubbles Solve de Sitter Troubles

Finding four-dimensional de Sitter spacetime solutions in string theory has been a vexing quest ever since the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. Building on a recent analysis of bubble-nucleation in the decay of (false-vacuum) AdS backgrounds where the interfacing bubbles themselves exhibit a de Sitter geometry we show that this resonates strongly with a stringy cosmic brane construction that naturally provides for an exponential mass-hierarchy and the localization of both gravity and matter, in addition to an exponentially suppressed positive cosmological constant. Finally, we argue that these scenarios can be realized in terms of a generalization of a small resolution of a conifold singularity in the context of a (Lorentzian) Calabi-Yau 5-fold, where the isolated (Lorentzian) two complex dimensional Fano variety is a four-dimensional de Sitter spacetime.

Automated summary

The search for four-dimensional de Sitter spacetime solutions in string theory has been challenging, but recent analysis suggests a connection with bubble-nucleation theory and stringy cosmic brane construction.