Related papers: Positivity bounds from multiple vacua and their co…
In many cases a nonlinear scalar field with potential $V$ can lead to accelerated expansion in cosmological models. This paper contains mathematical results on this subject for homogeneous spacetimes. It is shown that, under the assumption…
We propose that the solution to the cosmological vacuum energy puzzle may come from the infrared sector of the effective theory of gravity, where the impact of the trace anomaly is of upmost relevance. We proceed by introducing two…
The causal limit usually considered in cosmology is the particle horizon, delimiting the possibilities of causal connection in the expanding universe. However it is not a realistic indicator of the effective local limits of important…
The Galileon scalar field theory is a prototypical example of an effective field theory that exhibits the Vainshtein screening mechanism, which is incorporated into many extensions to Einstein gravity. The Galileon describes the helicity…
Positivity bounds coming from consistency of UV scattering amplitudes are in general insufficient to prove the weak gravity conjecture for theories beyond Einstein-Maxwell. Additional ingredients about the UV may be necessary to exclude…
We show that the geometry of cutoffs on eternal inflation strongly constrains predictions for the timescales of vacuum domination, curvature domination, and observation. We consider three measure proposals: the causal patch, the fat…
Fundamental principles of local quantum field theory or of quantum gravity can enforce consistency requirements on the space of consistent low-energy effective field theories. We survey the various techniques that have been used to put UV…
We apply the recently developed positivity bounds for particles with spin, applied away from the forward limit, to the low energy effective theories of massive spin-1 and spin-2 theories. For spin-1 theories, we consider the generic Proca…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) bounds the mass of a particle by its charge. It is expected that this bound can not be below the ultraviolet cut-off scale of the effective theory. Recently, an extension of the WGC was proposed in the…
We explore the infrared limit of quantum gravity in presence of a cosmological constant or effective potential for scalar fields. For a positive effective scalar potential, one-loop perturbation theory around flat space is divergent due to…
We derive positivity bounds on EFT coefficients in theories where boosts are spontaneously broken. We employ the analytic properties of the retarded Green's function of conserved currents (or of the stress-energy tensor) and assume the…
The current cosmological bound on the invisible axion scale may be avoided in the class of theories in which the gauge coupling constant is determined through the expectation value of some scalar field (e.g. moduli in supergravity and…
Understanding the implication of positivity bounds on loop-generated dim-8 operator coefficients is a nontrivial task, as these bounds only strictly hold when all the contributions are included in the dispersion relation up to a certain…
We show how calculable IR loop effects impact positivity bounds in Effective Field Theories with causal and unitary UV completions. We identify infrared singularities which appear in dispersion relations at $|t|\lesssim m^2$. In the…
In this paper, we examine the cosmological viability of a light mass galileon field consistent with local gravity constraints. The minimal, L_3=\Box\phi(\partial_\mu \phi)^2, massless galileon field requires an additional term in order to…
We use the quantum unimodular theory of gravity to relate the value of the cosmological constant, $\Lambda$, and the energy scale for the emergence of cosmological classicality. The fact that $\Lambda$ and unimodular time are complementary…
We consider a wide class of four-dimensional effective field theories in which gravity is coupled to multiple four-forms and their dual scalar fields, with membrane sources charged under the corresponding three-form potentials. Four-form…
Effective field theories for cosmology offer a powerful framework to investigate the dynamics of space--time and address longstanding open puzzles. In this work, we initiate a programme to analyse the ultraviolet completion of…
The 2015 Planck data release has placed tight constraints on the class of in ationary models allowed. The current best fit region favors concave downwards in ationary potentials, since they produce a suppressed tensor to scalar index ratio…
Physical principles such as unitarity, causality, and locality can constrain the space of consistent effective field theories (EFTs) by imposing two-sided bounds on the allowed values of Wilson coefficients. In this paper, we consider the…