Related papers: Dynamical Cobordism and Swampland Distance Conject…
We study the consequences of the presence of a boundary in topological field theories in various dimensions. We characterize, univocally and on very general grounds, the field content and the symmetries of the actions which live on the…
We use branes to generalize the Distance Conjecture. We conjecture that in any infinite-distance limit in the moduli space of a $d$-dimensional quantum gravity theory, among the set of particle towers and fundamental branes with at most…
This survey discusses hyperbolicity properties of moduli stacks and generalisations of the Shafarevich Hyperbolicity Conjecture to higher dimensions. It concentrates on methods and results that relate moduli theory with recent progress in…
We study five-dimensional Kasner cosmologies in the vicinity of a conifold locus occurring in a time-dependent Calabi-Yau compactification of M-theory. The dynamics of M2-brane winding modes, which become light in this region, is taken into…
We consider cosmological solutions of string and M-theory compactified to four dimensions by giving a general prescription to construct four-dimensional modular cosmologies with two commuting Killing vectors from vacuum solutions. By…
In recent times, a considerable effort has been dedicated to identify certain conditions -- the so-called swampland conjectures -- with an eye on identifying effective theories which have no consistent UV-completions in string theory. In…
The Emergent String Conjecture constrains the possible types of light towers in infinite-distance limits in quantum gravity moduli spaces. In this paper, we use these constraints to restrict the geometry of the scalar charge-to-mass vectors…
Superstring theories in the critical dimension D=10 are connected to one another by a well-explored web of dualities. In this paper we use closed-string tachyon condensation to connect the supersymmetric moduli space of the critical…
This paper is concerned with string cosmology and the dynamics of multiple scalar fields in potentials that can become negative, and their features as (Early) Dark Energy models. Our point of departure is the "String Axiverse", a scenario…
We examine some novel physical consequences of the general structure of moduli spaces of string vacua. These include (1) finiteness of the volume of the moduli space and (2) chaotic motion of the moduli in the early universe. To fix ideas…
The cobordism conjecture implies that consistent theories of Quantum Gravity must admit the introduction of boundaries. We study the dynamical realization of the cobordism conjecture in type IIB in AdS$_5\times \bf{S}^5$, using the existing…
We discuss the relationship between the Swampland program and QM2-branes, which are supersymmetric M2-branes with discrete spectrum. The worldvolume description of these M2-branes is well-known. The global description is given in terms of…
Exact string solutions are presented, providing backgrounds where a dynamical change of topology is occuring. This is induced by the time variation of a modulus field. Some lessons are drawn concerning the region of validity of effective…
We investigate how super-Planckian axions can arise when type IIB 3-form flux is used to restrict a two-axion field space to a one-dimensional winding trajectory. If one does not attempt to address notoriously complicated issues like Kahler…
We analyze the moduli spaces of Calabi-Yau threefolds and their associated conformally invariant nonlinear sigma-models and show that they are described by an unexpectedly rich geometrical structure. Specifically, the Kahler sector of the…
We examine recent claims of a large set of flux compactification solutions of string theory. We conclude that the arguments for AdS solutions are plausible. The analysis of meta-stable dS solutions inevitably leads to situations where long…
We study the cosmology of axion-scalar pairs, coupled by a hyperbolic field-space metric and with a string-motivated rational scalar potential. Borrowing tools from the theory of dynamical systems, we are able to classify all late-time…
We propose a class of field theories featuring solitonic solutions in which topological defects can end when they intersect other defects of equal or higher dimensionality. Such configurations may be termed ``Dirichlet topological…
An interpretation of spacelike singularities in string theory uses target space duality to relate the collapsing Schwarzschild geometry near the singularity to an inflationary cosmology in dual variables. An appealing picture thus results…
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…