Related papers: Constraints on discrete global symmetries in quant…
All global symmetries are expected to be explicitly broken by quantum gravitational effects, and yet may play an important role in Particle Physics and Cosmology. As such, any evidence for a well-preserved global symmetry would give insight…
We explore the notion of approximate global symmetries in quantum field theory and quantum gravity. We show that a variety of conjectures about quantum gravity, including the weak gravity conjecture, the distance conjecture, and the…
We discuss aspects of global and gauged symmetries in quantum field theory and quantum gravity, focusing on discrete gauge symmetries. An effective Lagrangian description of $\Z_p$ gauge theories shows that they are associated with an…
In this letter we use the Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence to establish a set of old conjectures about symmetries in quantum gravity. These are that no global symmetries are possible, that internal gauge…
We draw attention to a class of generalized global symmetries, which we call "Chern-Weil global symmetries," that arise ubiquitously in gauge theories. The Noether currents of these Chern-Weil global symmetries are given by wedge products…
The required absence of global symmetries in quantum gravity has been used to imply that all non-compact gauge theories are in the swampland. This argument stems from the idea that non-compact gauge symmetries always seem to be accompanied…
In this paper we study the consistency of generalized global symmetries in theories of quantum gravity, in particular string theory. Such global symmetries arise in theories with $(p+1)$-form gauge fields, and for spacetime dimension $d\leq…
There are strong reasons to believe that global symmetries of quantum theories cannot be exact in the presence of gravity. While this has been argued at the qualitative level, establishing a quantitative statement is more challenging. In…
Generalized symmetries (also known as categorical symmetries) is a newly developing technique for studying quantum field theories. It has given us new insights into the structure of QFT and many new powerful tools that can be applied to the…
A longstanding conjecture states that global symmetries should be absent in quantum gravity. By investigating large classes of Type IIB four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ effective field theories, we enlist the potential generalized global…
Dynamical quantum field theories (QFTs), such as those in which spacetimes are equipped with a metric and/or a field in the form of a smooth map to a target manifold, can be formulated axiomatically using the language of…
The construction of a consistent theory of quantum gravity is a problem in theoretical physics that has so far defied all attempts at resolution. One ansatz to try to obtain a non-trivial quantum theory proceeds via a discretization of…
Generalized global symmetries are a common feature of many quantum field theories decoupled from gravity. By contrast, in quantum gravity / the Swampland program, it is widely expected that all global symmetries are either gauged or broken,…
We summarize basic features of quantum field theories with discrete symmetry $\mathbb{Q}/\mathbb{Z}$ (possibly higher form, global or gauged). The classification of representations and anomalies is quite rich and involves the ring of…
Like general relativity, metric-affine gravity should be a viable effective quantum theory, otherwise it is a mathematical curiosity without physical application. Assuming a perturbative quantum field theory, the universal, flat limit of…
We study the problem of how to derive conformal symmetry in the framework of quantum gravity. We start with a generic gravitational theory which is invariant under both the general coordinate transformation (GCT) and Weyl transformation (or…
In several approaches towards a quantum theory of gravity, such as group field theory and loop quantum gravity, quantum states and histories of the geometric degrees of freedom turn out to be based on discrete spacetime. The most pressing…
The main obstacle in attempts to construct a consistent quantum gravity is the absence of independent flat time. This can in principle be cured by going out to higher dimensions. The modern paradigm assumes that the fundamental theory of…
We explore asymptotic safety of gravity-matter systems, discovering indications for a near-perturbative nature of these systems in the ultraviolet. Our results are based on the dynamical emergence of effective universality at the…
I discuss gauge and global symmetries in particle physics, condensed matter physics, and quantum gravity. In a modern understanding, global symmetries are approximate and gauge symmetries may be emergent. (Based on a lecture at the April,…