Related papers: The Gravitino Swampland Conjecture
There have been many attempts to construct de Sitter space-times in string theory. While arguably there have been some successes, this has proven challenging, leading to the de Sitter swampland conjecture: quantum theories of gravity do not…
In theories with moduli, extremal black holes behave such that for generic initial conditions, the distance traveled by the scalars from infinity to the horizon can grow with the size of the black hole. This, in turn, implies that larger…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) was proposed to constrain Effective Field Theories (EFTs) with Abelian gauge symmetry coupled to gravity. In this article, I study the WGC from low energy observers' perspective, and revisit the issue of to…
Multifield models with a curved field space have already been shown to be able to provide viable quintessence models for steep potentials that satisfy swampland bounds. The simplest dynamical systems of this type are obtained by coupling…
We construct the Supersymmetric Effective Field Theory of Inflation, that is the most general theory of inflationary fluctuations when time-translations and supersymmetry are spontaneously broken. The non-linear realization of these…
Under the assumption that a UV theory does not display superluminal behavior, we ask what constraints on superluminality are satisfied in the effective field theory (EFT). We study two examples of effective theories: quantum electrodynamics…
The single-soft-graviton limit of any quantum gravity scattering amplitude is given at leading order by the universal Weinberg pole formula. Gauge invariance of the formula follows from global energy-momentum conservation. In this paper…
The weakly-coupled heterotic string is known to have problems of dilaton/moduli stabilization, supersymmetry breaking (by hidden-sector gaugino condensation), gauge coupling unification (or the Newton's constant), QCD axion, as well as…
In the nonsymmetric gravitational theory (NGT) the space-time metric $g_{\mu\nu}$ departs from the flat-space Minkowski form $\eta_{\mu\nu}$ such that it is no longer symmetric, $i.e.$ $g_{\mu\nu} \ne g_{\nu\mu}$. We find that in the most…
We elaborate on the effective field theory (EFT) construction for dissipative open systems coupled to dynamical gravity, in light of recent developments on the EFT of dissipative hydrodynamics (HydroEFT). Our construction is based on the…
Effective field theories (EFTs) parametrize our ignorance of the underlying UV theory through their Wilson coefficients. However, not all values of these coefficients are consistent with fundamental physical principles. In this paper, we…
Massive $U(1)$ gauge theories featuring parametrically light vectors are suspected to belong in the Swampland of consistent EFTs that cannot be embedded into a theory of quantum gravity. We study four-dimensional, chiral $U(1)$ gauge…
We clearly formulate and study further a conjecture of effective field theory interaction with gravity in the cosmological context. The conjecture stems from the fact that the melding of quantum theory and gravity typically indicates the…
We study constraints on the effective field theory (EFT) from the relative entropy between two theories: we refer to these as target and reference theories. The consequence of the non-negativity of the relative entropy is investigated by…
One of the main goals of the field of string phenomenology is to describe the properties of our spacetime in low-energy effective models related to and consistent with string theory. It is known that our universe undergoes accelerated…
We consider E. Verlinde's proposal that gravity is an entropic force -- we shall call this theory entropic gravity (EG) -- and reanalyze a recent claim that this theory is in contradiction with the observation of the gravitationally-bound…
Infinite distance limits in the moduli space of a quantum gravity theory are characterized by having infinite towers of states becoming light, as dictated by the Distance Conjecture in the Swampland program. These towers imply a drastic…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture is a nontrivial conjecture about quantum gravity that makes sharp, falsifiable predictions which can be checked in a broad range of string theory examples. However, in the presence of massless scalar fields…
As a low energy effective field theory, classical General Relativity receives an infrared relevant modification from the conformal trace anomaly of the energy-momentum tensor of massless, or nearly massless, quantum fields. The local form…
In the weak-field limit of General Relativity, gravitational waves obey linear equations and propagate at the speed of light. These properties of General Relativity are supported by the observation of ultra high energy cosmic rays as well…