The cosmological constant and the Gauss-Bonnet term in D dimensions

In our previous paper [1, 2], we proposed a probabilistic argument to explain the reason why the cosmological constant is very small in 4D. It is natural to ask if the result can be generalized to D-dimension. Moreover, in higher dimensional theory motivated by string theory the Gauss-Bonnet term plays an important role. Therefore, in this paper, we generalize our result to arbitrary D dimensions including the Gauss-Bonnet term. As a result, we have two main results. We find that the Euclidean action of the bounce, B, describing the decay of a de Sitter vacuum, is proportional to Λ-1/2(D-2), which has a pole as Λ → 0 where Λ is the cosmological constant of the parent vacuum. This result is similar to the result in 4D. The other result is that we find a new decay channel, describing up-tunnelling from anti-de Sitter into de Sitter. The meaning of this new decay channel in the string landscape should be explored in the future.