Moduli space holography and the finiteness of flux vacua

Abstract

A holographic perspective to study and characterize field spaces that arise in string compactifications is suggested. A concrete correspondence is developed by studying two-dimensional moduli spaces in supersymmetric string compactifications. It is proposed that there exist theories on the boundaries of each moduli space, whose crucial data are given by a Hilbert space, an Sl(2, ℂ)-algebra, and two special operators. This boundary data is motivated by asymptotic Hodge theory and the fact that the physical metric on the moduli space of Calabi-Yau manifolds asymptotes near any infinite distance boundary to a Poincaré metric with Sl(2, ℝ) isometry. The crucial part of the bulk theory on the moduli space is a sigma model for group-valued matter fields. It is discussed how this might be coupled to a two-dimensional gravity theory. The classical bulk-boundary matching is then given by the proof of the famous Sl(2) orbit theorem of Hodge theory, which is reformulated in a more physical language. Applying this correspondence to the flux landscape in Calabi-Yau fourfold compactifications it is shown that there are no infinite tails of self-dual flux vacua near any co-dimension one boundary. This finiteness result is a consequence of the constraints on the near boundary expansion of the bulk solutions that match to the boundary data. It is also pointed out that there is a striking connection of the finiteness result for supersymmetric flux vacua and the Hodge conjecture.