The string landscape: On formulas for counting vacua Original Research Article

We derive formulas for counting certain classes of vacua in the string/M theory landscape. We do so in the context of the moduli space of M-theory compactifications on singular manifolds with image holonomy. Particularly, we count the numbers of gauge theories with different gauge groups but equal numbers of image factors which are dual to each other. The vacua correspond to various symmetry breaking patterns of grand unified theories. Counting these dual vacua is equivalent to counting the number of conjugacy classes of elements of finite order inside Lie groups. We also point out certain cases where the conventional expectation is that symmetry breaking patterns by Wilson lines and Higgs fields are the same, but we show they are in fact different.