Emergent de Sitter Cosmology from Decaying Anti-de Sitter Space

Abstract

Recent developments in string compactifications demonstrate obstructions to the simplest constructions of low energy cosmologies with positive vacuum energy. The existence of obstacles to creating scale-separated de Sitter solutions indicates a UV/IR puzzle for embedding cosmological vacua in a unitary theory of quantum gravity. Motivated by this puzzle, we propose an embedding of positive energy Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker cosmology within string theory. Our proposal involves confining 4D gravity on a brane which mediates the decay from a nonsupersymmetric five-dimensional anti-de Sitter false vacuum to a true vacuum. In this way, it is natural for a 4D observer to experience an effective positive cosmological constant coupled to matter and radiation, avoiding the need for scale separation or a fundamental de Sitter vacuum.