Stabilizing moduli with a positive cosmological constant in heterotic M-theory

Abstract

It is shown that strongly coupled heterotic M-theory with anti-five-branes in the S1/2 bulk space can have meta-stable vacua which break N ≤ 1 supersymmetry and have a small, positive cosmological constant. This is demonstrated for the ''minimal'' heterotic standard model. This vacuum has the exact MSSM matter spectrum in the observable sector, a trivial hidden sector vector bundle and both five-branes and anti-five-branes in the bulk space. The Kähler moduli for which the cosmological constant has phenomenologically acceptable values are shown to also render the observable sector vector bundle slope-stable. A corollary of this result is that strongly coupled M-theory vacua with only five-branes in the S1/2 interval may have stabilized moduli, but at a supersymmetry preserving minimum with a large, negative cosmological constant. © SISSA 2006.