Related papers: Axion Monodromy and the Weak Gravity Conjecture
Non-invertible global symmetry often predicts degeneracy in axion potentials and carries important information about the global form of the gauge group. When these symmetries are spontaneously broken they can lead to the formation of stable…
We disprove a well-known conjecture of Boston (2000), which claims that a just-infinite pro-$p$ group is branch if and only if it admits a positive-dimensional embedding in the group of $p$-adic automorphisms. This is obtained as a result…
We investigate the weak gravity bounds on the U(1) gauge theory and scalar field theories in various dimensional noncommutative space. Many results are obtained, such as the upper bound on the noncommutative scale $g_{YM}M_p$ for four…
Connections between weak gravity conjecture (WGC) bounds and scattering positivity have been extensively studied over the past decade. This work further explores these connections by proposing positivity as a potential amplitude criterion…
We study a perturbation theory for embedding gravity equations in a background for which corrections to the embedding function are linear with respect to corrections to the flat metric. The arbitrariness remaining after solving the…
We study supersymmetric domain walls in N=1 supergravity theories, including those with modular-invariant superpotentials arising in superstring compactifications. Such domain walls are shown to saturate the Bogomol'nyi bound of wall energy…
It is quite well known for some time that string inspired axionic terms of the form $\nu (\phi)\tilde{R}R$, known also as Chern-Simons terms, do not affect the scalar perturbations and the background evolution for a flat…
It is known that the cosmological constant can be dynamically tuned to an arbitrary small value in classes of scalar tensor theories. The trouble with such schemes is that effective gravity itself vanishes. We explore the possibility of…
The $S$-matrix formulation of gravity suggests that the $\theta$-vacuum structure must not be sustained by the theory. We point out that, when applied to the vacuum of general relativity, this criterion hints to supersymmetry. The…
We present a simple mechanism for obtaining large-field inflation, and hence a gravitational wave signature, from string theory compactified on twisted tori. For Nil manifolds, we obtain a leading inflationary potential proportional to…
Swampland criteria like the Weak Gravity Conjecture should not only apply to particles, but also to other lower-codimension charged objects in 4d EFTs like strings and membranes. However, the description of the latter is in general subtle…
The QCD axion with $f_a$ at an intermediate scale, 10**9-10**12 GeV, seems in conflict with the gravity spoil of global symmetries and may face the axionic domain wall problem. We point out that the string compactifications with an…
In this article we provide a more detailed account of the geometry and topology of the composite bundle formalism introduced by Tresguerres in Phys. Rev. D 66 (2002) 064025 [1] to accommodate gravitation as a gauge theory. In the first half…
The weak gravity conjecture applied for the aligned natural inflation indicates that generically there can be a modulation of the inflaton potential, with a period determined by sub-Planckian axion scale. We study the oscillations in the…
Because the inflationary mechanism is extremely sensitive to UV-physics, the construction of theoretically robust models of inflation provides a unique window on Planck-scale physics. We review efforts to use an axion with a shift symmetry…
After inflation occurs, a weakly coupled scalar field will in general not be in thermal equilibrium but have a distribution of values determined by the inflationary Hubble parameter. If such a field subsequently undergoes discrete symmetry…
Domain wall structure which may form in theories with spontaneously broken parity is generically in conflict with standard cosmology. It has been argued that Planck scale suppressed effects can be sufficient for removing such domain walls.…
The recent proposal by Hawking and Turok for obtaining an open inflationary universe from singular instantons makes use of low-energy effective Lagrangians describing gravity coupled to scalars and non-propagating antisymmetric tensors. In…
We give two new analytical solutions to the low-energy string theory action that violate the weak cosmic censorship conjecture. They are classical charged solutions to the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory in four dimensions that come in two…
Multidimensionality of our Universe is one of the most intriguing assumption in modern physics. It follows naturally from theories unifying different fundamental interactions with gravity, e.g. M/string theory. The idea has received a great…