New Kaluza-Klein Instantons and Decay of AdS Vacua


Abstract in English

We construct a generalization of Wittens Kaluza-Klein instanton, where a higher-dimensional sphere (rather than a circle as in Wittens instanton) collapses to zero size and the geometry terminates at a bubble of nothing, in a low energy effective theory of M theory. We use the solution to exhibit instability of non-supersymmetric AdS_5 vacua in M Theory compactified on positive Kaehler-Einstein spaces, providing a further evidence for the recent conjecture that any non-supersymmetric anti-de Sitter vacuum supported by fluxes must be unstable.

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