2012/04/30 by Friðrik Freyr Gautason, Daniel Junghans, Marco Zagermann · 58 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmological constant #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Geometry #Heterotic string theory #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Minkowski space #Non-critical string theory #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Relationship between string theory and quantum field theory #Scalar (mathematics) #Spacetime #String (physics) #String cosmology #String field theory #Theoretical physics #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/jhep06(2012)029
published in Journal of High Energy Physics 2012(6) (Springer Nature) · 18 pages, no figures. v2: minor modifications, references added
openalex publication_date 2012/06/01 · arxiv created 2012/08/17 · arxiv updated 2012/08/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We examine to what extent perturbative alpha'-corrections can generate a small cosmological constant in warped string compactifications. Focusing on the heterotic string at lowest order in the string loop expansion, we show that, for a maximally symmetric spacetime, the alpha'-corrected 4D scalar potential has no effect on the cosmological constant. The only relevant terms are instead higher order products of 4D Riemann tensors, which, however, are found to vanish in the usual perturbative regime of the alpha'-expansion. The heterotic string therefore only allows for 4D Minkowski vacua to all orders in alpha', unless one also introduces string loop and/or nonperturbative corrections or allows for curvatures or field strengths that are large in string units. In particular, we find that perturbative alpha'-effects cannot induce weakly curved AdS4 solutions.