Related papers: Emergence and the Swampland Conjectures
Motivated by principles from the Swampland program, which characterize requirements for a consistent UV completion of quantum gravity, combined with observational data, we are led to a unique corner of the quantum gravity landscape. In…
Scalar fields with inverse power-law effective potentials may provide a negative pressure component to the energy density of the universe today, as required by cosmological observations. In order to be cosmologically relevant today, the…
It has recently been argued that string theory does not admit de Sitter vacua. This would imply that the current accelerated expansion of the universe is not driven by a cosmological constant (or vacuum energy) but by other means such as a…
In effective quantum field theory, a spin-1 vector boson can have a technically natural small mass that does not originate from the Higgs mechanism. For such theories, which may be written in St\"uckelberg form, there is no point in field…
Scalar weak gravity conjectures (SWGCs) attempt to pinpoint the ranges of couplings consistent with a fundamental theory of all interactions. We identify a generic dynamical consequence of these conjectures for cosmology and show that SWGCs…
The Swampland Distance Conjecture (SDC) states that, for any infinite-distance limit in the moduli space of a quantum gravity effective field theory (EFT), there should exist an infinite tower of states that become exponentially light.…
We study the dynamical evolution of FLRW cosmologies in the presence of a tower of scalar light states and a runaway exponential potential. Some of the attractor solutions have problematic behaviours from the EFT point of view, which we use…
We consider effective theories with massive fields that have spins larger than or equal to two. We conjecture a universal cutoff scale on any such theory that depends on the lightest mass of such fields. This cutoff corresponds to the mass…
The Sharpened Distance Conjecture and Tower Scalar Weak Gravity Conjecture are closely related but distinct conjectures, neither one implying the other. Motivated by examples, I propose that both are consequences of two new conjectures: 1.…
We investigate the impact of particle production during inflation in scenarios where an infinite tower of states features a mass scale that decreases exponentially along the inflationary trajectory. Such couplings naturally arise in string…
We consider scalar-tensor theories of gravity in an accelerating universe. The equations for the background evolution and the perturbations are given in full generality for any parametrization of the Lagrangian, and we stress that apparent…
Recently proposed de Sitter Swampland conjectures imply non-trivial constraints on a scalar field potential in any effective field theory that admits a quantum gravity completion. The original conjecture apparently excludes many…
A low-energy effective theory is said to be in the swampland if it does not have any consistent UV completion inside a theory of quantum gravity. The natural question is if the standard model of particle physics, possibly with some minimal…
We study the Weak Gravity Conjecture in the presence of scalar fields. The Weak Gravity Conjecture is a consistency condition for a theory of quantum gravity asserting that for a U(1) gauge field, there is a particle charged under this…
We revisit the Scalar Weak Gravity Conjecture and investigate the possibility to impose that scalar interactions dominate over gravitational ones. More precisely, we look for consequences of assuming that, for leading scalar interactions,…
The Swampland program, which looks for low energy theories consistent with quantum gravity, has led to the introduction of a dark dimension stemming from the cosmological constant. We show that the same argument leads to the emergence of…
Upon investigating asymptotic regimes of the F-theory moduli space, we verify that a tower of light states arises as predicted by the Distance Conjecture. Specifically, we provide a geometric classification of the infinite distance limits…
Scalar-tensor theories of gravity that embrace conformal coupling to the scalar curvature are the focal point of cosmology on discussions of inflation and late-time accelerating universe. Although there exists a stringent nucleo-synthesis…
The weak gravity conjecture suggests that, in a self-consistent theory of quantum gravity, the strength of gravity is bounded from above by the strengths of the various gauge forces in the theory. In particular, this intriguing conjecture…
Asymptotic (late-time) cosmology depends on the asymptotic (infinite-distance) limits of scalar field space in string theory. Such limits feature an exponentially decaying potential $V \sim \exp(- c \phi)$ with corresponding Hubble scale $H…