Related papers: Do We Live in the Swampland?
The ground state of string theory may lie at a point of ``maximally enhanced symmetry", at which all of the moduli transform under continuous or discrete symmetries. This hypothesis, along with the hypotheses that the theory at high…
In this note we show that models of natural inflation based on closed string axions are incompatible with the weak gravity conjecture (WGC). Specifically, we use T-duality in order to map the bounds on the charge-to-mass ratio of particles…
An effective quantum field theory (QFT) with a manifest UV/IR connection, so as to be valid for arbitrarily large volumes, can successfully be applied to the cosmological dark energy problem as well as the cosmological constant (CC)…
Given its non-renormalization properties, low-energy supersymmetry provides an attractive framework for extending the Standard Model and for resolving the hierarchy problem. Models with softly broken N =1 supersymmetry were extensively…
A number of Swampland conjectures and in particular the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) suggest that de Sitter space is highly unstable if it exists at all. In this paper we construct effective theories of scalars rolling on…
In a generic setting of Wess-Zumino models, we prove that the existence of a supersymmetric vacuum with a vanishing superpotential can be a consequence of a continuous or discrete R-symmetry when invariant fields are not less than fields…
Some time ago we have suggested that positive vacuum energy exhibits a finite quantum break time, which can be a signal that a positive cosmological constant is inconsistent. From the requirement that Universe never undergoes through…
We argue that the hidden sector potential energy is generically of order the intermediate scale although the true cosmological constant does vanish. This would significantly change the predicted values of soft parameters for a variety of…
We argue that the study of the statistics of the landscape of string vacua provides the first potentially predictive -- and also falsifiable -- framework for string theory. The question of whether the theory does or does not predict low…
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…
We argue that under certain assumptions the quantum break time approach and the trans-Planckian censorship conjecture both lead to de Sitter swampland constraints of the same functional form. It is a well known fact that the quantum…
It is suggested that the true ground state of the world has exactly vanishing vacuum energy and that the cosmological constant that seems to have been observed is due to our region of the universe being stuck in a false vacuum, whose energy…
5D superconformal theories involve vacuum valleys characterized in the simplest case by the vacuum expectation value of a real scalar field. If it is nonzero, conformal invariance is spontaneously broken and the theory is not…
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 propose that the Standard Model is coupled to a sector with an enormous landscape of vacua, where only the dimensionful parameters--the vacuum energy and Higgs masses--are finely "scanned" from one vacuum to another, while dimensionless…
In order to validate or invalidate a large class of low energy effective theories, the Swampland conjecture has attracted significant attention, recently. It can be stated as inequalities on the potential of a scalar field which is…
We explore the possibility of spontaneous CP violation within the Next to Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. In the most general form of the model, without a discrete $Z_3$ symmetry, we find that even at tree level spontaneous CP…
The mystery of the cosmological constant is probably the most pressing obstacle to significantly improving the models of elementary particle physics derived from string theory. The problem arises because in the standard framework of low…
We point out that the physics at the extreme IR---cosmology---might provide tests of the physics of the extreme UV---the Weak Gravity Conjecture. The current discrepancies in the determination of $H_0$ may hint at a modification of…
Several extensions of the standard model feature new colored states that besides modifying the running of the QCD coupling could even lead to the loss of asymptotic freedom. Such a loss would potentially diminish the Wilsonian fundamental…