Related papers: Lectures on the Swampland Program in String Compac…
We reconsider the problem of bounding higher derivative couplings in consistent weakly coupled gravitational theories, starting from general assumptions about analyticity and Regge growth of the S-matrix. Higher derivative couplings are…
We argue that the light particles in string theory obey an effective quantum mechanics modified by the inclusion of a quantum-gravitational friction term, induced by unavoidable couplings to unobserved massive string states in the…
This talk surveys a broad range of applications of quantum field theory, as well as some recent developments. The stress is on the notion of effective field theories. Topics include implications of neutrino mass and a possible small value…
We explain the need for a theory of quantum gravity and some general ideas about string theory, including the idea of the derivation of the Hawking Bekenstein entropy formula for extremal black holes. We then give a general description of…
This elementary introduction to string field theory highlights the features and the limitations of this approach to quantum gravity as it is currently understood. String field theory is a formulation of string theory as a field theory in…
We propose a new swampland conjecture stating that the limit of vanishing gravitino mass corresponds to the massless limit of an infinite tower of states and to the consequent breakdown of the effective field theory. We test our proposal in…
It was recently pointed out that the existence of dark energy imposes highly restrictive constraints on effective field theories that satisfy the Swampland conjectures. We provide a critical confrontation of these constraints with the…
This article is an introduction to two currently very active research programs, the Conformal Bootstrap and Scattering Amplitudes. Rather than attempting full surveys, the emphasis is on common ideas and methods shared by these two…
Formulating a quantum theory of gravity lies at the heart of fundamental theoretical physics. This collection of lecture notes encompasses a selection of topics that were covered in six mini-courses at the Nordita PhD school "Towards…
Positivity bounds on scattering amplitudes provide a necessary condition for a low-energy effective field theory to have a consistent ultraviolet completion. Their extension to gravity theories has been studied in the past years aiming at…
These are the lecture notes for a short course in topological string theory that I gave at Uppsala University in the fall of 2004. The notes are aimed at PhD students who have studied quantum field theory and general relativity, and who…
String theory one-loop threshold corrections are studied in a background field approach due to Kiritsis and Kounnas which uses space-time curvature as an infrared regulator. We review the conformal field theory aspects using the…
In recent years it has been realized that in string/$M$ theories compactified to four dimensions which satisfy cosmological constraints, it is possible to make some generic predictions for particle physics and dark matter: a non-thermal…
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…
We discuss the obstacles for defining a set of observable quantities analogous to an S-matrix which are needed to formulate string theory in an accelerating universe. We show that the quintessence models with the equations of state $-1 < w…
An important window to quantum gravity phenomena in low energy noncommutative (NC) quantum field theories (QFTs) gets represented by a specific form of UV/IR mixing. Yet another important window to quantum gravity, a holography, manifests…
This is a brief overview on the current status of string theory for non-specialists. The purpose is to give an aspect on the nature of string theory as a unified theory of all interactions including quantum gravity and to discuss future…
We recapitulate multiple arguments that Eternal Inflation, and the String Landscape are actually part of the Swampland: ideas in Effective Quantum Field Theory that do not have a counterpart in genuine models of Quantum Gravity.
The ultraviolet cutoff on a quantum field theory can be interpreted as a condensate of the affine curvature such that while the maximum of the affine action gives the power-law corrections, its minimum leads to the emergence of gravity.…
We investigate the consequences of combining swampland conjectures with the requirement of asymptotic safety. To this end, we explore the infrared regime of asymptotically safe gravity in the quadratic one-loop approximation, and we…