Related papers: The Weak Gravity Conjecture and Axion Strings
Requiring a strictly local origin of visible sector phenomenology is perhaps the strongest, most falsifiable condition that one can impose on string theory at the high scale: it at once excludes a vast majority of the string landscape, and…
We explore the physics potential of a terrestrial detector for observing axionic Kaluza-Klein excitations coming from the Sun within the context of higher-dimensional theories of low-scale quantum gravity. In these theories, the heavier…
We consider Kaluza-Klein theories as candidates for the unification of gravity and the electro-weak model. In particular, we fix how to reproduce geometrically the interaction between fermions and gauge bosons, in the low energy limit.
I argue that in open-string theory with hierarchically small (or large) extra dimensions, gauge groups can unify naturally with logarithmically-running coupling constants at the high Kaluza-Klein (or string-winding) scale. This opens up the…
Axions predicted in string theory may have a scalar potential which has a much shallower potential region than the conventional cosine potential. We first show that axions which were located at such shallow potential regions generically…
We consider effective theories with massive fields that have spins larger than or equal to two. We conjecture a universal cutoff scale on any such theory that depends on the lightest mass of such fields. This cutoff corresponds to the mass…
The strong coupling limit of a quantum system is in general quite complicated, but in some cases a great simplification occurs: the strongly coupled limit is equivalent to the weakly coupled limit of some other system. In string theory…
A weak-field solution of Einstein's equations is constructed. It is generated by a circular cosmic string revolving in its plane about the centre of the circle. (The revolution is introduced to prevent the string from collapsing.) This…
We consider some questions of naturalness which arise when one considers conventional field theories in the presence of gravitation: the problem of global symmetries, the strong CP problem, and the cosmological constant problem. Using…
We argue that in theories of quantum gravity with discrete gauge symmetries, e.g. $\textbf{Z}_k$, the gauge couplings of U$(1)$ gauge symmetries become weak in the limit of large $k$, as $g\to k^{-\alpha}$ with $\alpha$ a positive order 1…
A weak-field solution of Einstein's equations is constructed. It is generated by a circular cosmic string externally supported against collapse. The solution exhibits a conical singularity, and the corresponding deficit angle is the same as…
We study some phenomenological implications of models where the scale of quantum gravity effects lies much below the four-dimensional Planck scale. These models arise from M-theory vacua where either the internal space volume is large or…
The Ooguri-Vafa Swampland Conjectures claim that in any consistent theory of quantum gravity, when venturing to large distances in scalar field space, a tower of particles will become light at a rate that is exponential in the field space…
As a cutoff scale of quantum gravity, the species scale can be defined by the scale at which the perturbativity of the non-renormalizable gravitational interaction begins to break down. Since it is determined by the number of species in the…
Almost all known theories of quantum gravity satisfy the Lattice Weak Gravity Conjecture (LWGC), which posits that a consistent theory of quantum gravity must have a superextremal particle at every site in the charge lattice. However, a…
We unveil a remarkable interplay between rigid field theories (RFTs), charge-to-mass ratios $\gamma$ and scalar curvature divergences $\mathsf{R}_{\rm div}$ in the vector multiplet moduli space of 4d ${\cal N}=2$ supergravities, obtained…
The ultraviolet cutoff on a quantum field theory can be interpreted as a condensate of the affine curvature such that while the maximum of the affine action gives the power-law corrections, its minimum leads to the emergence of gravity.…
It appears that string-M-theory is the only viable candidate for a complete theory of matter. It must therefore contain both gravity and QCD. What is particularly surprising is the recent conjecture that strongly coupled QCD matrix elements…
Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Dvali have recently proposed that gravity may become strong at energies near 1 TeV thus removing the hierarchy problem. This scenario can be tested in several ways at present and future colliders. In this paper…
We identify the gauge theory dual of a spinning string of minimal energy with spins S_1, S_2 on AdS_5 and charge J on S^5. For this purpose we focus on a certain set of local operators with two different types of covariant derivatives…