Related papers: The Weak Gravity Conjecture and Axion Strings
In this note, we discuss the implications of the weak gravity conjecture (WGC) for general models of large-field inflation with a large number of axions $N$. We first show that, from the bottom-up perspective, such models admit a variety of…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture predicts that in quantum gravity there should exist overcharged states, that is states with charge larger than their mass. Extending this to large masses and charges, we are expecting similar overcharged…
We present several pieces of evidence for strong-weak coupling duality symmetry in the heterotic string theory, compactified on a six dimensional torus. These include symmetry of the 1) low energy effective action, 2) allowed spectrum of…
The cosmological observations provide a strong evidence that there is a positive cosmological constant in our universe and thus the spacetime is asymptotical de Sitter space. The conjecture of gravity as the weakest force in the…
We consider, in a string theory framework, physical processes of phenomenological interest in models with a low string scale. The amplitudes we study involve tree-level virtual gravitational exchange, divergent in a field-theoretical…
We consider $f(R,T)$ modified theories of gravity in the context of string theory inspired dilaton gravity. We deal with a specific model that under certain conditions describes the late time Universe in accord with observational data in…
We study gauge coupling unification in the presence of extra dimensions compactified at a few TeV. Achieving unification requires a large number of gauge boson Kaluza-Klein excitations lighter than the string scale, such that the…
The weak gravity conjecture has been proposed as a criterion to distinguish the landscape from the swampland in string theory. As an application in cosmology of this conjecture, we use it to impose theoretical constraint on parameters of…
We study the energy spectrum of the composite magnetic monopole (CMM) in the model originally constructed in arXiv:1608.06951 to examine how the applicability of the weak gravity conjecture (WGC) propagates to lower energy scales in the…
In theories with a perturbatively massless 2-form (dual to an axion), a paradox may arise in the process of black hole evaporation. Schwarzschild black holes can support a non-trivial Wilson-line-type field, the integral of the 2-form…
Starting from a weak gauge principle we give a new and critical revision of the argument leading to charge quantization on arbitrary spacetimes. The main differences of our approach with respect to previous works appear on spacetimes with…
In the context of string theory, axions appear to provide the most plausible solution of the strong CP problem. However, as has been known for a long time, in many string-based models, the axion coupling parameter F_a is several orders of…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture states that in any consistent theory of quantum gravity in the landscape of string theory, the repulsive force mediated by a U(1) gauge field must be stronger than the attractive force of gravity. In this work,…
The weak gravity conjecture (WGC) asserts that an Abelian gauge theory coupled to gravity is inconsistent unless it contains a particle of charge $q$ and mass $m$ such that $q \geq m/m_{\rm Pl}$. This criterion is obeyed by all known…
Based on Quantum Gravity arguments, it has been suggested that all kinetic terms of light particles below the UV cut-off could arise in the IR via quantum (loop) corrections. These loop corrections involve infinite towers of states becoming…
Several recent works have claimed that the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) excludes super-Planckian displacements of axion fields, and hence large-field axion inflation, in the absence of monodromy. We argue that in theories with $N\gg1$…
The Sharpened Distance Conjecture and Tower Scalar Weak Gravity Conjecture are closely related but distinct conjectures, neither one implying the other. Motivated by examples, I propose that both are consequences of two new conjectures: 1.…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture is typically stated as a bound on the mass-to-charge ratio of a particle in the theory. Alternatively, it has been proposed that its natural formulation is in terms of the existence of a particle which is…
We point out that the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) implies that sufficiently small extremal black holes are necessarily in the strong-field regime of electrodynamics, and therefore probe the UV completion of the Maxwell sector. To…
The promising solution to the strong CP problem by a Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry may introduce quality and hierarchy problems, which are both relevant to Planck physics. In this paper, we study whether both problems can be explained by…