Related papers: Theta-problem and the String Swampland
We make a number of conjectures about the geometry of continuous moduli parameterizing the string landscape. In particular we conjecture that such moduli are always given by expectation value of scalar fields and that moduli spaces with…
It is generally accepted that consistent coupling to quantum gravity implies that any low energy free parameter is in reality the vacuum expectation value of some local quantum field. In this note we present a modest attempt to prove this…
The swampland is the set of seemingly consistent low-energy effective field theories that cannot be consistently coupled to quantum gravity. In this review we cover some of the conjectural properties that effective theories should possess…
Recently, Kim, Shiu and Vafa proposed general consistency conditions for six dimensional supergravity theories with minimal supersymmetry coming from couplings to strings. We test them in explicit perturbative orientifold models in order to…
The ``Swampland Program'' aims to discriminate consistent-looking effective field theories that do not admit a UV completion in quantum gravity from those that do. While most often developed under the umbrella of string theory, several…
Using the embedding tensor formalism we give the general conditions for the existence of N=1 vacua in spontaneously broken N=2 supergravities. Our results confirm the necessity of having both electrically and magnetically charged multiplets…
Recent developments in string theory suggest that string theory landscape of vacua is vast. It is natural to ask if this landscape is as vast as allowed by consistent-looking effective field theories. We use universality ideas from string…
It has been notoriously difficult to construct a meta-stable de Sitter (dS) vacuum in string theory in a controlled approximation. This suggests the possibility that meta-stable dS belongs to the swampland. In this paper, we propose a…
Topological field theories (TFTs) play an important role in characterizing the deep infrared (IR) of many quantum systems with a mass gap, as well as the global symmetries of quantum field theories (QFTs) decoupled from gravity. In…
An important unsolved problem that affects practically all attempts to connect string theory to cosmology and phenomenology is how to distinguish effective field theories belonging to the string landscape from those that are not consistent…
We point out that the swampland conjectures, forbidding the presence of global symmetries and (meta-)stable de Sitter vacua within quantum gravity, pick up a dynamical axion for the electroweak SU(2) gauge theory as a natural candidate for…
There is significant evidence suggesting that continuous global symmetries are always gauged in quantum gravity. However, very weakly gauged symmetries seem global to an effective field theory expansion in powers of Newton's constant. We…
The refined swampland de Sitter conjecture (SdSC) is a proposed constraint on the form of the total potential in a theory including quantum gravity. According to this conjecture potentials possessing metastable de Sitter vacua are in the…
Swampland conjecture has been recently proposed to connect early time cosmological models with the string landscape, and then to understand if related scalar fields and potentials can come from some fundamental theory in the high energy…
I argue that the ten dimensional non--supersymmetric tachyonic superstrings may serve as good starting points for the construction of viable phenomenological vacua. Thus, enlarging the space of possible solutions that may address some of…
We discuss the issue of the cosmological constant in non-commutative non-supersymmetric gauge theories. In particular, in orbifold field theories non-commutativity acts as a UV cut-off. We suggest that in these theories quantum corrections…
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 show that the central charges that group theory allows in the (2,0) supersymmetry translations algebra arise from a string and a 3-brane by commuting two supercharges. We show that the net force between two such parallel strings…
The theta dependent of pure gauge theories in four dimensions can be studied using a duality of large N gauge theories with string theory on a certain spacetime. Via this duality, one can argue that for every theta, there are infinitely…
Within the context of supergravity-coupled supersymmetry, fields which are gauge and global singlets are usually considered anathema. Their vacuum expectation values are shifted by quadratically divergent tadpole diagrams which are cutoff…