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arxiv: hep-th/0004134 · v3 · submitted 2000-04-18 · ✦ hep-th · astro-ph· gr-qc· hep-ph

Quantization of Four-form Fluxes and Dynamical Neutralization of the Cosmological Constant

classification ✦ hep-th astro-phgr-qchep-ph
keywords constantcosmologicalfluxesfluxfour-formmultipleobservationalquantization
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A four-form gauge flux makes a variable contribution to the cosmological constant. This has often been assumed to take continuous values, but we argue that it has a generalized Dirac quantization condition. For a single flux the steps are much larger than the observational limit, but we show that with multiple fluxes the allowed values can form a sufficiently dense `discretuum'. Multiple fluxes generally arise in M theory compactifications on manifolds with non-trivial three-cycles. In theories with large extra dimensions a few four-forms suffice; otherwise of order 100 are needed. Starting from generic initial conditions, the repeated nucleation of membranes dynamically generates regions with a cosmological constant in the observational range. Entropy and density perturbations can be produced.

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