Genericity and Universality in the String Theory Landscape
Flux compactifications that give rise a large number of string theory vacua tend to be topologically complicated and involve a large number of moduli fields in the four dimensional effective description. In this talk, I will discuss how random matrix theory can be applied to ‘random supergravities’ with many fields, and how these techniques may provide a tool to compute the distribution of de Sitter vacua in parts of the landscape. Flux compactifications are not completely random however, and geometric relations from ten dimensions are encoded in the low-energy supergravity. In some regions of the moduli space, general IIB/F-theory flux compactifications exhibit analytically computable and universal properties that are independent of the compactification geometry, number of moduli, or the detailed flux choice. The corresponding spectra are in stark contrast with the expectations from random matrix theory and thereby provide a limit to the applicability of such techniques. As an aside, I will also discuss some astronomical observations that, if recent estimates of the number of flux vacua in string theory/F-theory are even remotely accurate, would render the string theory realisation of Weinberg’s anthropic solution to the cosmological constant problem inapplicable. Hence, under this assumption, null results for such observations are a falsifiable prediction of the string theory, anthropic landscape.
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