A distance conjecture beyond moduli?
Abstract
The distance conjecture states that for theories with moduli coupled to gravity a tower of states becomes light exponentially in the geodesic distance in moduli space. This specifies how effective field theories break down for large field values. However, phenomenological field theories have no moduli, but a scalar potential that deforms dynamical trajectories away from geodesic curves. In this note we speculate on how one should generalise the distance conjecture, in asymptotic field regimes, to include a scalar potential. We test the generalised distance conjecture in a few cases, demonstrate a link with pseudo-/fake supersymmetry and apply it to the ekpyrotic scenario in cosmology. For the latter we observe that the pre-uplift KKLT potential could provide a stringy embedding of ekpyrosis away from the asymptotic regimes in field space.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2407.03715,
title = {A distance conjecture beyond moduli?},
author = {Cédric Debusschere and Flavio Tonioni and Thomas Van Riet},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.03715},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
8+1 pages and references, comments welcome!; v2: 9+2 pages and references, with typos fixed, refs. added, and an extra appendix comparing with hep-th/2407.02705; v3, JHEP version: 11+2 pages and references, with improved tests of the proposal in sec. 4, including 3 figs. and refs. added