Related papers: Snowmass White Paper: UV Constraints on IR Physics
The idea that the existence of a consistent UV completion satisfying the fundamental axioms of local quantum field theory or string theory may impose positivity constraints on the couplings of the leading irrelevant operators in a…
A low-energy perturbation theory is developed from the nonperturbative framework of covariant Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) by employing the background field method. The resulting perturbation theory is a 2-parameter expansion in the…
Quantum gravity is an important and to great extent unsolved problem. There are many different approaches to the quantization of the metric field, both perturbative and non-perturbative. The current situation in the perturbative quantum…
A primary goal in holographic theories of gravity is to study the causal structure of spacetime from the field theory point of view. This is a particularly difficult problem when the spacetime has a non-trivial causal structure, such as a…
I review the lattice approach to quantum gravity, and how it relates to the non-trivial ultraviolet fixed point scenario of the continuum theory. After a brief introduction covering the general problem of ultraviolet divergences in gravity…
The vacuum of quantum fields contains correlated fluctuations. When restricted to one side of a surface these have a huge entropy of entanglement that scales with the surface area. If UV physics renders this entropy finite, then a…
Gravity constrains the range of validity of quantum field theory. As has been pointed out by Cohen, Kaplan, and Nelson (CKN), such effects lead to interdependent ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) cutoffs that may stabilize the dark energy…
Coupling quantum field theory (QFT) \!-\! even free QFT \!-\! to gravity leads to well-known problems. In particular, the stress tensor $T_{\mu\nu}$ (gravity's source) and its correlators typically diverge in the UV, creating a conflict…
Our current best guess for a unified theory of gravitation and quantum field theory (string theory) generically predicts a set of requirements for a consistently quantized theory, the Swampland criteria. Refined versions of these criteria…
We evaluate quantum gravity corrections to the standard model Higgs potential $V(\phi)$ a la Coleman-Weinberg and examine the stability question of $V(\phi)$ at scales of Planck mass $M_{\rm Pl}$. We compute the gravity one-loop corrections…
We propose quantum gravitational constraints on effective four-dimensional theories with N=1 supersymmetry. These Swampland constraints arise by demanding consistency of the worldsheet theory of a class of axionic, or EFT, strings whose…
In this whitepaper, I describe modern applications of effective field theory (EFT) techniques to classical and quantum gravity, with relevance to problems in astrophysics and cosmology. As in applications of EFT to high-energy, nuclear, or…
I briefly summarize a recent research program aiming to probe the landscape of low-energy phases of string theory from a global perspective. Borrowing conceptual lessons from the swampland program, I will discuss how the effective theories…
Progress in the quantum readout and control of mechanical devices from single atoms to large masses may enable a first generation of experiments probing the gravitational interaction in the quantum regime, conceivably within the next…
We study the influence of the fluctuations of a Lorentz invariant and conserved vacuum on cosmological metric perturbations, and show that they generically blow up in the IR. We compute this effect using the K\"all\'en-Lehmann spectral…
We argue that massive quantum fields source low-frequency long-wavelength metric fluctuations through the quantum fluctuations of their stress-energy, given reasonable assumptions about the analytic structure of its correlators. This can be…
We investigate the effect on cosmological evolution of a strongly coupled quantum field that undergoes renormalization group flow from a UV CFT to an IR CFT. The field theory is defined by perturbation of a holographic CFT by a relevant…
The cosmological constant problem and the absence of new natural physics at the electroweak scale, if confirmed by the LHC, may either indicate that the nature is fine-tuned or that a refined notion of naturalness is required. We construct…
We revisit gauge invariant cosmological perturbations in UV-modified, z = 3 Horava gravity with one scalar matter field, which has been proposed as a renormalizable gravity theory without the ghost problem in four dimensions. We confirm…
Recently Horava proposed a renormalizable gravity theory with higher spatial derivatives in four dimensions which reduces to Einstein gravity with a non-vanishing cosmological constant in IR but with improved UV behaviors. Here, I consider…