Related papers: The four-dimensional null energy condition as a sw…
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…
In discussions of Bousso's Covariant Entropy Bound, the Null Energy Condition is always assumed, as a sufficient {\em but not necessary} condition which helps to ensure that the entropy on any lightsheet shall necessarily be finite. The…
The Improved Quantum Null Energy Condition (INEC) was recently derived from the (restricted) quantum focusing conjecture (QFC), and is a statement about the energy-momentum tensor (EMT) of field theories in Minkowski space-time. It is a…
It is shown that the averaged null energy condition is fulfilled for a dense, translationally invariant set of vector states in any local quantum field theory in two-dimensional Minkowski spacetime whenever the theory has a mass gap and…
We argue that, in the presence of time-dependent fluxes and quantum corrections, four-dimensional de Sitter solutions should appear in the type IIB string landscape and not in the swampland. Our construction considers generic choices of…
We extend previous proofs that violations of the null energy condition (NEC) are a generic and universal feature of traversable wormholes to completely non-symmetric time-dependent wormholes. We show that the analysis can be phrased purely…
We propose a technically natural scenario whereby an initially large cosmological constant (c.c.) is relaxed down to the observed value due to the dynamics of a scalar evolving on a very shallow potential. The model crucially relies on a…
The null energy condition (NEC), an important assumption of the Penrose singularity theorem, is violated by quantum fields. The natural generalization of the NEC in quantum field theory, the renormalized null energy averaged over a finite…
We establish a new no-go theorem for cosmology: spatially flat ($k=0$) and open ($k=-1$) Friedmann--Robertson--Walker (FRW) non-static spacetimes cannot be simultaneously nonsingular, geodesically complete, and consistent with the averaged…
We consider the effective stress-energy tensors for the foreground and background sectors in ghost-free bimetric gravity. By considering the symmetries of the theory, we show that the foreground and background null energy conditions (NECs)…
Inflation and dark energy (DE), both featuring accelerated expansion, are crucial components of modern cosmology. As indicated by singularity theorems, null energy condition (NEC) violation is essential for resolving the initial singularity…
Traversable wormhole solutions in General Relativity require exotic matter sources that violate the null energy condition (NEC), and such behavior maybe avoided in modified gravity. In this study, we analyze the energy conditions for…
One of the fundamental challenges in string theory is to derive realistic four-dimensional cosmological backgrounds from it despite strict consistency conditions that constrain its possible low-energy backgrounds. In this work, we focus on…
Energy conditions, especially the null energy condition (NEC), are generically imposed on solutions to retain a physically sensible classical field theory and they also play an important role in the AdS/CFT duality. Using this duality, we…
We discuss the viability of $f(R)$ and Brans-Dicke theories of gravity in light of the recent Swampland conjectures. We show that in the case of perfect fluid domination the swampland conjecture conditions may be easily satisfied and…
The four principal energy conditions (ECs) in general relativity prohibit negative energies, repulsive gravity and superluminal energy flows. One must invoke exotic matter to violate any one of these, yet $\Lambda$CDM does so quite…
We present a novel source of dark energy, which is motivated by the prevalence of hidden sectors in string theory models and is consistent with all of the proposed swampland conjectures. Thermal effects hold a light hidden sector scalar at…
Explorations of the violation of null energy condition (NEC) in cosmology could enrich our understanding of the very early universe and the related gravity theories. Although a fully stable NEC violation can be realized in the ``beyond…
We examine the quantum null energy condition (QNEC) for a $2+1$-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) at strong coupling in the background of a wormhole spacetime by employing the AdS/CFT correspondence. First, we numerically construct a…
The Quantum Null Energy Condition (QNEC) is a new local energy condition that a general Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is believed to satisfy, relating the classical null energy condition (NEC) to the second functional derivative of the…