Bubble instability of mIIA on AdS4 x S6

We consider compactifications of massive IIA supergravity on a six-sphere. This setup is known to give rise to non-supersymmetric AdS 4 vacua preserving SO(7) as well as G(2) residual symmetry. Both solutions have a round S-6 metric and are supported by the Romans' mass and internal F-6 flux. While the SO(7) invariant vacuum is known to be perturbatively unstable, the G(2) invariant one has been found to have a fully stable Kaluza-Klein spectrum. Moreover, it has been shown to be protected against brane jet instabilities. Motivated by these results, we study possible bubbling solutions connected to the G(2) vacuum, representing non-perturbative instabilities of the latter. We indeed find an instability channel represented by the nucleation of a bubble of nothing dressed up with a homogeneous D2 brane charge distribution in the internal space. Our solution generalizes to the case where S-6 is replaced by any six-dimensional nearly-Kahler manifold.

Automated summary

This article primarily discusses compactifications of massive IIA supergravity on a six-sphere, focusing on possible bubbling solutions connected to the G(2) vacuum and its associated instabilities.