Seeking the Ground State of String Theory

Michael Dine

Published 1999-03-25, updated 1999-03-26Version 2

Recently, a number of authors have challenged the conventional assumption that the string scale, Planck mass, and unification scale are roughly comparable. It has been suggested that the string scale could be as low as a TeV. The greatest obstacle to developing a string phenomenology is our lack of understanding of the ground state. We explain why the dynamics which determines this state is not likely to be accessible to any systematic approximation. We note that the racetrack scheme, often cited as a counterexample, suffers from similar difficulties. We stress that the weakness of the gauge couplings, the gauge hierarchy, and coupling unification suggest that it may be possible to extract some information in a systematic approximation. We review the ideas of Kahler stabilization, an attempt to reconcile these facts. We consider whether the system is likely to sit at extremes of the moduli space, as in recent proposals for a low string scale. Finally we discuss the idea of Maximally Enhanced Symmetry, a hypothesis which is technically natural, compatible with basic facts about cosmology, and potentially predictive.