On Stringy de Sitter Spacetimes

Abstract

We reexamine a family of models with a 3+1-dimensional de Sitter spacetime obtained in the standard tree-level low-energy limit of string theory with a non-trivial anisotropic axion-dilaton background. While such limiting approximations are encouraging but incomplete, our analysis reveals a host of novel features, and shows these models to interpolate between standard and well understood supersymmetric string theory solutions. Finally, we conjecture that this de Sitter spacetime naturally arises by including more of the stringy degrees of freedom, such as a recently advanced variant of the phase-space formalism, as well as the analytic continuation of a complex two-dimensional Fano variety arising as a small resolution in a Calabi-Yau 5-fold.