Related papers: Sharpening the Distance Conjecture in Diverse Dime…
Neutrino masses and quantum gravity are strong reasons to extend the standard model of particle physics. A large extra dimension can be motivated by quantum gravity and can explain the small neutrino masses with new singlet states that…
We show that no device or gedanken experiment is capable of measuring a distance less than the Planck length. By "measuring a distance less than the Planck length" we mean, technically, resolve the eigenvalues of the position operator to…
We examine the motion of light fields near the bottom of a potential valley in a multi-dimensional field space. In the case of two fields we identify three general scales, all of which must be large in order to justify an effective…
The accelerated expansion of the universe demands presence of an exotic matter, namely the dark energy. Though the cosmological constant fits this role very well, a scalar field minimally coupled to gravity, or quintessence, can also be…
We present a fully nonlinear study of long wavelength cosmological perturbations within the framework of the projectable Horava-Lifshitz gravity, coupled to a single scalar field. Adopting the gradient expansion technique, we explicitly…
We investigate the emergence of infinite-dimensional symmetries in the absence of gauge invariance by analyzing massless scalar theories. We construct an infinite tower of charges that arise from the subleading equations of motion at null…
Resolving the tension between quantum superpositions and the uniqueness of the classical world is a major open problem. One possibility, which is extensively explored both theoretically and experimentally, is that quantum linearity breaks…
Let $\mathbb K$ be a field of characteristic 0. Let $\Gamma\subset\mathbb P^n_{\mathbb K}$ be a reduced finite set of points, not all contained in a hyperplane. Let $hyp(\Gamma)$ be the maximum number of points of $\Gamma$ contained in any…
Cosmological observations of the recent universe suggest that dark energy equation of state parameter $w$ is growing with time, departing from a cosmological constant for which $w=-1$. Standard quintessence models allow for a varying…
Recent study in [1] discovered that introducing a massive charged scalar field and requiring the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) to hold can eliminate a class of Weak Cosmic Censorship Conjecture (WCCC) counterexamples in anti-de Sitter…
We consider the conditions necessary for obtaining perturbative maximal supergravity in d dimensions as a decoupling limit of type II superstring theory compactified on a (10 -- d)-torus. For dimensions d = 2 and d = 3 it is possible to…
If the mechanism responsible for the smallness of the vacuum energy is consistent with local quantum field theory, general arguments suggest the existence of at least one unobserved scalar particle with Compton wavelength bounded from below…
We study L^p-L^r restriction estimates for algebraic varieties in d-dimensional vector spaces over finite fields. Unlike the Euclidean case, if the dimension $d$ is even, then it is conjectured that the L^{(2d+2)/(d+3)}-L^2 Stein-Tomas…
Motivated by the recently proposed bounds on the slow-roll parameters for scalar potentials arising from string/M-theory compactifications, a.k.a. the Refined de Sitter Swampland conjecture, we explore the sharpness of such constraints…
A celebrated unit distance conjecture due to Erd\H os says that that the unit distances cannot arise more than $C_{\epsilon}n^{1+\epsilon}$ times (for any $\epsilon>0$) among $n$ points in the Euclidean plane (see e.g. \cite{SST84} and the…
Recent string theory tests of swampland ideas like the distance or the dS conjectures have been performed at weak coupling. Testing these ideas beyond the weak coupling regime remains challenging. We propose to exploit the modular…
We propose a novel approach for parameterizing the luminosity distance, based on the use of rational "Pad\'e" approximations. This new technique extends standard Taylor treatments, overcoming possible convergence issues at high redshifts…
Recently there has been an interesting revival of the idea to use large extra dimensions to address the dark energy problem, exploiting the (true) observation that towers of states with masses split, by $M^2_N = f(N) m^2,$ with $f$ an…
In a very recent paper [1], we have proposed a novel $4$-dimensional gravitational theory with two dynamical degrees of freedom, which serves as a consistent realization of $D\to4$ Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity with the rescaled…
We analyse the Weak Gravity Conjecture for chiral four-dimensional F-theory compactifications with N=1 supersymmetry. Extending our previous work on nearly tensionless heterotic strings in six dimensions, we show that under certain…