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Related papers: The Weak Gravity Conjecture and Axion Strings

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The mild form of the Weak Gravity Conjecture states that quantum or higher-derivative corrections should decrease the mass of large extremal charged black holes at fixed charge. This allows extremal black holes to decay, unless protected by…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2021-04-27 Lars Aalsma , Alex Cole , Gregory J. Loges , Gary Shiu

Common features of known quantum gravity theories may hint at the general nature of quantum gravity. The absence of continuous global symmetries is one such feature. This inspired the Weak Gravity Conjecture, which bounds masses of charged…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2016-11-15 Ben Heidenreich , Matthew Reece , Tom Rudelius

In this note we give a summary of [arXiv:2401.14449] in which we proposed a proof of the weak gravity conjecture in perturbative string theory. While the WGC is well established, checked in many examples, and many of the ingredients we use…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2026-05-06 Matteo Lotito

We explore the prospects for bounding the weak scale using the weak gravity conjecture (WGC), addressing the hierarchy problem by violating the expectations of effective field theory. Building on earlier work by Cheung and Remmen, we…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2019-10-02 Nathaniel Craig , Isabel Garcia Garcia , Seth Koren

We conjecture a general upper bound on the strength of gravity relative to gauge forces in quantum gravity. This implies, in particular, that in a four-dimensional theory with gravity and a U(1) gauge field with gauge coupling g, there is a…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2010-04-06 Nima Arkani-Hamed , Lubos Motl , Alberto Nicolis , Cumrun Vafa

The authors of arXiv:1610.01533 have recently proposed a stronger version of the weak gravity conjecture (WGC), based on which they concluded that all those non-supersymmetric AdS vacua that can be embedded within a constistent theory of…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2017-08-02 Ulf Danielsson , Giuseppe Dibitetto

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…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2018-10-09 Kazuyuki Furuuchi

We consider the gravitational correction to the running of gauge coupling. Weak gravity conjecture implies that the gauge theories break down when the gravitational correction becomes greater than the contribution from gauge theories. This…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2010-10-27 Qing-Guo Huang

We study weakly coupled $U(1)$ theories in $AdS_3$, their associated charged BTZ solutions, and their charged spectra. We find that modular invariance of the holographic dual two-dimensional CFT and compactness of the gauge group together…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2016-11-23 Miguel Montero , Gary Shiu , Pablo Soler

The weak gravity conjecture (WGC) is an ultraviolet consistency condition asserting that an Abelian force requires a state of charge $q$ and mass $m$ with $q>m/m_{\rm Pl}$. We generalize the WGC to product gauge groups and study its tension…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2014-07-31 Clifford Cheung , Grant N. Remmen

The Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) posits that gravity must be the weakest force in any consistent theory of quantum gravity. Originally formulated to constrain the landscape of effective field theories arising from string theory, the WGC…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2025-04-30 Gayatri Ghosh

The weak gravity conjecture suggests that, in a self-consistent theory of quantum gravity, the strength of gravity is bounded from above by the strengths of the various gauge forces in the theory. In particular, this intriguing conjecture…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2017-11-22 Shahar Hod

Axions with broken discrete shift symmetry (axion monodromy) have recently played a central role both in the discussion of inflation and the `relaxion' approach to the hierarchy problem. We suggest a very minimalist way to constrain such…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2016-07-21 Arthur Hebecker , Fabrizio Rompineve , Alexander Westphal

We analyse the Weak Gravity Conjecture for chiral four-dimensional F-theory compactifications with N=1 supersymmetry. Extending our previous work on nearly tensionless heterotic strings in six dimensions, we show that under certain…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2019-10-02 Seung-Joo Lee , Wolfgang Lerche , Timo Weigand

Models of large-field inflation based on axion-like fields with shift symmetries can be simple and natural, and make a promising prediction of detectable primordial gravitational waves. The Weak Gravity Conjecture is known to constrain the…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2016-01-27 Ben Heidenreich , Matthew Reece , Tom Rudelius

We propose a generalisation of the Weak Gravity Conjecture in the presence of scalar fields. The proposal is guided by properties of extremal black holes in ${\cal N}=2$ supergravity, but can be understood more generally in terms of…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2017-09-13 Eran Palti

The Weak Gravity Conjecture, if valid, rules out simple models of Natural Inflation by restricting their axion decay constant to be sub-Planckian. We revisit stringy attempts to realise Natural Inflation, with a single open string axionic…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2016-06-29 Karta Kooner , Susha Parameswaran , Ivonne Zavala

The Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) asserts a powerful consistency condition on gauge theories coupled to gravity, and it is widely believed that its proof will shed light on the quantum origin of gravitational interactions. Holography, and…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2018-11-01 Alfredo Urbano

We study universal features of the density of one-particle states $\rho(E)$ in weakly coupled theories of gravity at energies above the quantum gravity cutoff $\Lambda$, defined as the scale suppressing higher-derivative corrections to the…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2025-05-05 Alek Bedroya , Rashmish K. Mishra , Max Wiesner

The black hole weak gravity conjecture (WGC) is a set of linear inequalities on the four-derivative corrections to Einstein--Maxwell theory. Remarkably, in four dimensions, these combinations appear in the $2 \to 2$ photon amplitudes,…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2022-09-07 Johan Henriksson , Brian McPeak , Francesco Russo , Alessandro Vichi