Related papers: Generalized Symmetry Breaking Scales and Weak Grav…
All global symmetries are expected to be explicitly broken by quantum gravitational effects, and yet may play an important role in Particle Physics and Cosmology. As such, any evidence for a well-preserved global symmetry would give insight…
We highlight the fact that the lack of scale invariance in the gravitational field equations of General Relativity results from the underlying assumption that the appropriate scale for the gravitational force should be linked to the atomic…
The claim that at the so-called Planck scale our current physics breaks down and a new theory of quantum gravity is required is ubiquitous, but the evidence is shakier than the confidence of those assertions warrants. In this paper, I…
The required absence of global symmetries in quantum gravity has been used to imply that all non-compact gauge theories are in the swampland. This argument stems from the idea that non-compact gauge symmetries always seem to be accompanied…
We draw attention to a class of generalized global symmetries, which we call "Chern-Weil global symmetries," that arise ubiquitously in gauge theories. The Noether currents of these Chern-Weil global symmetries are given by wedge products…
There are strong reasons to believe that global symmetries of quantum theories cannot be exact in the presence of gravity. While this has been argued at the qualitative level, establishing a quantitative statement is more challenging. In…
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…
It is widely believed and in part established that exact global symmetries are inconsistent with quantum gravity. One then expects that approximate global symmetries can be quantitatively constrained by quantum gravity or swampland…
Generalized global symmetries are a common feature of many quantum field theories decoupled from gravity. By contrast, in quantum gravity / the Swampland program, it is widely expected that all global symmetries are either gauged or broken,…
We generalize the scale invariant gravity by allowing a negative kinetic energy term for the classical scalar field. This gives birth to a new scalar-tensor theory of gravity, in which the scalar field is in fact an auxiliary field. For a…
The question whether global symmetries can be realized in quantum-gravity-matter-systems has far-reaching phenomenological consequences. Here, we collect evidence that within an asymptotically safe context, discrete global symmetries of the…
It is argued that gravity should cause a breakdown of quantum mechanics, at low energies, accessible to table-top experiments. It is then shown that one can formulate a theory of quantum gravity in which gravitational correlations exist…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture holds that in a theory of quantum gravity, any gauge force must mediate interactions stronger than gravity for some particles. This statement has surprisingly deep and extensive connections to many different…
I discuss gauge and global symmetries in particle physics, condensed matter physics, and quantum gravity. In a modern understanding, global symmetries are approximate and gauge symmetries may be emergent. (Based on a lecture at the April,…
We conjecture that weak interactions are peculiar manifestations of quantum gravity at the Fermi scale, and that the Fermi constant is related to the Newtonian constant of gravitation.In this framework one may understand the violations of…
3-dimensional gravity coupled to Maxwell (or Klein-Gordon) fields is exactly soluble under the assumption of axi-symmetry. The solution is used to probe several quantum gravity issues. In particular, it is shown that the quantum…
We propose a generalized formulation of the Scalar Weak Gravity Conjecture (SWGC) based on the analogy with the derivation of the Gauge Weak Gravity Conjecture (GWGC). We discuss some phenomenological implications of this Generalized SWGC,…
There exists a widely spread notion that gravitational effects can strongly violate global symmetries. It may lead to many important consequences. We will argue, in particular, that nonperturbative gravitational effects in the axion theory…
A longstanding conjecture states that global symmetries should be absent in quantum gravity. By investigating large classes of Type IIB four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ effective field theories, we enlist the potential generalized global…
So far, none of attempts to quantize gravity has led to a satisfactory model that not only describe gravity in the realm of a quantum world, but also its relation to elementary particles and other fundamental forces. Here, we outline the…