Related papers: Curing with hemlock: escaping the swampland using …
Recent developments in string theory suggest that string theory landscape of vacua is vast. It is natural to ask if this landscape is as vast as allowed by consistent-looking effective field theories. We use universality ideas from string…
In this paper we propose a quantum version of the swampland conjecture. We argue that quantum instabilities of de Sitter space discovered using field theoretical methods, are directly related to the difficulties in finding stringy de Sitter…
The swampland is the set of seemingly consistent low-energy effective field theories that cannot be consistently coupled to quantum gravity. In this review we cover some of the conjectural properties that effective theories should possess…
We posit the existence of the Marshland within string theory. This region is the boundary between the landscape of consistent low-energy limits of quantum gravity, and the swampland of theories that cannot be embedded within string theory…
The transcendental expectation of string theory is that the nature of the fundamental forces, particle spectra and masses, together with coupling constants, is uniquely determined by mathematical and logical consistency, non-empirically,…
We argue that a generic instability afflicts vacua that arise in theories whose moduli space has large dimension. Specifically, by studying theories with multiple scalar fields we provide numerical evidence that for a generic local minimum…
String theory has strong implications for cosmology: it tells us that we cannot have a cosmological constant, that single-field slow-roll inflation is ruled out, and that black holes decay. We elucidate the origin of these statements within…
We consider string theory in a time dependent orbifold with a null singularity. The singularity separates a contracting universe from an expanding universe, thus constituting a big crunch followed by a big bang. We quantize the theory both…
Progress in string theory has resulted in a whole landscape of vacua solutions.In this talk I describe a proposal for exploring the cosmological implications of the landscape, based on the dynamics of the wavefunction of the universe…
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…
The string theory landscape consists of many metastable de Sitter vacua, populated by eternal inflation. Tunneling between these vacua gives rise to a dynamical system, which asymptotically settles down to an equilibrium state. We…
Our current best guess for a unified theory of gravitation and quantum field theory (string theory) generically predicts a set of requirements for a consistently quantized theory, the Swampland criteria. Refined versions of these criteria…
It has recently been conjectured that string theory does not admit de Sitter vacua, and that quintessence explains the current epoch of accelerated cosmic expansion. A proposed, key prediction of this scenario is time-varying couplings in…
We explore the possibility that quantum cosmology considerations could provide a selection principle in the landscape of string vacua. We propose that the universe emerged from the string era in a thermally excited state and determine,…
We give a brief overview of the string landscape and techniques used to construct string compactifications. We then explain how this motivates the notion of the swampland and review a number of conjectures that attempt to characterize…
The ``Swampland Program'' aims to discriminate consistent-looking effective field theories that do not admit a UV completion in quantum gravity from those that do. While most often developed under the umbrella of string theory, several…
We provide an overview of the string landscape and the Swampland program. Our review of the string landscape covers the worldsheet and spacetime perspectives, including vacua and string dualities. We then review and motivate the Swampland…
We study various bubble solutions in string/M theories obtained by double Wick rotations of (non-)extremal brane configurations. Typically, the geometry interpolates de Sitter space-time times non-compact extra-dimensional space in the…
In this paper we construct a stringy embedding of the dark bubble model of an expanding 4D cosmology with the help of branes rotating in extra dimensions. The universe rides a bubble which has nucleated in an unstable higher dimensional…
The interplay between string theory and cosmology is very promising. Since string theory will yield a quantum theory of space-time and unify all forces of nature, it has the potential of addressing many of the conceptual problems of the…