Three-form lifting of dilaton flat direction without and with gravity

Georgios K. Karananas

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arXiv · 2604.01272

Three-form lifting of dilaton flat direction without and with gravity

Georgios K. Karananas

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Abstract

Spontaneous scale symmetry breaking is commonly associated with a flat direction in the action. We show that this need not be so if the dilaton is coupled to a three-form field in a manner compatible with gauge invariance and dilatations. The resulting effective dynamics lifts the flat direction without introducing explicit scale-violating operators. When gravity is included, the corresponding potential takes the form of an exponential plateau.

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Georgios K. Karananas. 2026-04-01. Three-form lifting of dilaton flat direction without and with gravity. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.01272

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