title: de Sitter vacua via consistent terms.
abstract: We introduce a new mechanism for producing locally stable de Sitter or Minkowski vacua, with spontaneously broken N = 1 supersymmetry and no massless scalars, applicable to superstring and M-theory compactifications with fluxes. We illustrate the mechanism with a simple N = 1 supergravity model that provides parametric control on the sign and the size of the vacuum energy. The crucial ingredient is a gauged U(1) that involves both an axionic shift and an R symmetry, and severely constrains the F- and D-term contributions to the potential.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma La Sapienza and INFN, Sezione di Roma, P.le Aldo Moro 2, I-00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Villadoro
authors.forename: Fabio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zwirner