Related papers: Looking for structure in the cobordism conjecture
We argue that any proposed quantum theory of gravity with non-trivial cobordism classes in the space of configurations belongs to the Swampland. The argument is based on the assumption that there are no global symmetries in a consistent…
The U-dualities of maximally supersymmetric supergravity theories lead to celebrated non-perturbative constraints on the structure of quantum gravity. They can also lead to the presence of global symmetries since manifolds equipped with…
We study the cobordism conjecture of McNamara and Vafa which asserts that the bordism group of quantum gravity is trivial. In the context of type IIB string theory compactified on a circle, this predicts the presence of D7-branes. On the…
We study the topological properties of bordisms interpolating between different 9d gauged supergravities obtained from compactification of type IIB string theory on $\mathbb{S}^1$ with a non-trivial $\mathsf{SL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$ bundle. We…
The absence of global symmetries in a quantum gravity theory often requires the introduction of (new) symmetry-breaking defects, which appear as singular objects in the low-energy description. This has been formalized in the Cobordism…
The Cobordism Conjecture states that any Quantum Gravity configuration admits, at topological level, a boundary ending spacetime. We study the dynamical realization of cobordism, as spacetime dependent solutions of Einstein gravity coupled…
In this note, we conjecture and provide evidence that quantum gravity cobordism classes are trivialized by elementary generators with tension at most order 1 in Planck units. Motivated by the attractor mechanism and a number of key…
It has been proposed that cobordism and K-theory groups, which can be mathematically related in certain cases, are physically associated to generalised higher-form symmetries. As a consequence, they should be broken or gauged in any…
In this work we investigate the Swampland Cobordism Conjecture in the context of type IIB string theory geometries with non-trivial duality bundle. Quite remarkably, we find that many non-trivial bordism classes with duality bundles in…
We consider consequences of triviality of cobordism classes and anomaly cancellation in supergravity theories in $d>6$. We argue that this leads to the existence of certain defects which we call "I-folds" (a generalization of orientifolds).…
A generalized-homology bordism-theory is constructed, such that for certain manifold homotopy stratified sets (MHSS; Quinn-spaces) homeomorphism-invariant geometric fundamental-classes exist. The construction combines three ideas: Firstly,…
We prove a generalization of the cobordism hypothesis of Baez--Dolan and Hopkins--Lurie for bordisms with arbitrary geometric structures, such as Riemannian metrics, complex and symplectic structures, principal bundles with connections, or…
The evenness conjecture for the equivariant unitary bordism groups states that these bordism groups are free modules over the unitary bordism ring on even-dimensional generators. In this paper we review the cases in which the conjecture is…
The U-dualities of maximally supersymmetric non-chiral supergravity (SUGRA) theories lead to strong constraints on the non-perturbative structure of quantum gravity. In this paper we determine Spin- and Pin-lifts of these dualities, which…
By using a bosonization we uncover the topological gravity structure of Labastida, Pernici and Witten in ordinary $2d$ gravity coupled to $(p,q)$ minimal models. We study the cohomology class associated with the fermionic charge of the…
We study a categorical construction called the cobordism category, which associates to each Waldhausen category a simplicial category of cospans. We prove that this construction is homotopy equivalent to Waldhausen's…
McNamara and Vafa conjectured that any pair of consistent quantum gravity theories can be connected by a domain wall. We test the conjecture in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. There are topological constraints on existence of an…
We investigate a conjecture due to Haefliger and Thurston in the context of foliated manifold bundles. In this context, Haefliger-Thurston's conjecture predicts that every $M$-bundle over a manifold $B$ where $\text{dim}(B)\leq…
The swampland is the set of seemingly consistent low-energy effective field theories that cannot be consistently coupled to quantum gravity. In this review we cover some of the conjectural properties that effective theories should possess…
In this article we provide a more detailed account of the geometry and topology of the composite bundle formalism introduced by Tresguerres in Phys. Rev. D 66 (2002) 064025 [1] to accommodate gravitation as a gauge theory. In the first half…