Related papers: Is Gravity the Weakest Force?
The Swampland program aims to distinguish effective theories which can be completed into quantum gravity in the ultraviolet from those which cannot. This article forms an introduction to the field, assuming only a knowledge of quantum field…
We view and provide further evidence for a number of Swampland criteria, including the Weak Gravity Conjecture, Distance Conjecture and bounds on the finiteness of the quantum gravity vacua from the prism of the finiteness of black hole…
Interest has focussed recently on low energy implications of a nontrivial scale invariant sector of an effective field theory with an IR fixed point, manifest in terms of ``unparticles'' with peculiar properties. If unparticle stuff exists…
At present we know nothing about the nature of the dark energy accounting for about 70% of the energy density of the Universe. One possibility is that the dark energy is provided by an extremely light field, the quintessence, rolling down…
In the present work we revisit a model consisting of a scalar field with a quartic self-interaction potential non-minimally (conformally) coupled to gravity [1]. When the scalar field vacuum is in a broken symmetry state, an effective…
The remarkable connections between gravity and thermodynamics seem to imply that gravity is not fundamental but emergent, and in particular, as Verlinde suggested, gravity is probably an entropic force. In this paper, we will argue that the…
We consider a preferred-frame bimetric theory in which the scalar gravitational field both influences the metric and has direct dynamical effects. A modified version ("v2") is built, by assuming now a locally-isotropic dilation of…
The dark bubble model makes a positive cosmological constant natural in string theory, and predicts several new physical phenomena within reach in the near future. In this paper we study the experimental consequences of the model for the…
Although $f(R)$ modification of late time cosmology is successful in explaining present cosmic acceleration, it is difficult to satisfy the fifth-force constraint simultaneously. Even when the fifth-force constraint is satisfied, the…
The evidence for the observation of the Higgs spin-0-boson as a manifestation of a scalar field provides the missing corner stone for the standard model of particles (SM). However, the SM fails to explain the non-visible but gravitationally…
Swampland conjectures are a set of proposed necessary conditions for a low-energy effective field theory to have a UV completion inside a theory of quantum gravity. Swampland conjectures have interesting phenomenological consequences, and…
The Axion Weak Gravity Conjecture provides one of the most effective quantum gravity tools for constraining particle physics and cosmology, but it has long been thought of as a slightly fuzzy statement: given an axion with decay constant…
We propose an alternative refined de Sitter conjecture. It is given by a natural condition on a combination of the first and second derivatives of the scalar potential. We derive our conjecture in the same weak coupling, semi-classical…
We consider the possibility of energy being exchanged between the scalar and matter fields in scalar-tensor theories of gravity. Such an exchange provides a new mechanism which can drive variations in the gravitational 'constant' G. We find…
The weak gravity conjecture implies the necessary existence of particles with charge-to-mass ratio $q/m \geq 1$ so that the extremal charged black hole can completely evaporate without leaving a dangerous stable extremal remnant while…
In previous work it has been shown that the electromagnetic quantum vacuum, or electromagnetic zero-point field, makes a contribution to the inertial reaction force on an accelerated object. We show that the result for inertial mass can be…
In a gravitational theory with a massless photon the maximum charge-to-mass ratio of black holes approaches the prediction of the Einstein-Maxwell theory as black hole mass increases: $Q_{\rm ext}/M =1+ \alpha/M^2$ for some constant…
In this contribution, we review a general argument showing that de Sitter critical points of extended supergravity are in tension with the magnetic weak gravity conjecture if the gravitino mass is vanishing. Motivated by this assumption, we…
Motivated by the early discovery of the gigantic landscape of string theory vacua, in recent years people switched direction to try to find constraints on low energy effective field theories from UV-complete descriptions for example quantum…
The recent simultaneous detection of gravitational waves and a gamma ray burst from a neutron star merger significantly shrank the space of viable scalar-tensor theories by demanding that the speed of gravity is equal to that of light. The…