Related papers: Shedding black hole light on the emergent string c…
The breakdown of gravitational effective field theories is intimately connected to the emergence of infinite towers of light states near infinite-distance limits in field space. In string theory, up to duality frame, such towers arise from…
Upon investigating asymptotic regimes of the F-theory moduli space, we verify that a tower of light states arises as predicted by the Distance Conjecture. Specifically, we provide a geometric classification of the infinite distance limits…
We study universal features of the density of one-particle states $\rho(E)$ in weakly coupled theories of gravity at energies above the quantum gravity cutoff $\Lambda$, defined as the scale suppressing higher-derivative corrections to the…
We conjecture a general upper bound on the strength of gravity relative to gauge forces in quantum gravity. This implies, in particular, that in a four-dimensional theory with gravity and a U(1) gauge field with gauge coupling g, there is a…
The aim of this paper is to elucidate a close connection between the black hole area law and the infinite distance conjecture in the context of the swampland. We consider families of black hole geometries, parametrized by their event…
We analyze infrared consistency conditions of 3D and 4D effective field theories with massive scalars or fermions charged under multiple $U(1)$ gauge fields. At low energies, one can integrate out the massive particles and thus obtain a…
We study towers of light particles that appear in infinite-distance limits of moduli spaces of 9-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=1$ string theories, some of which notably feature decompactification limits with running string coupling. The lightest…
We argue that, for generic string compactifications, dark energy is likely to signal the beginning of the end of our universe, perhaps even through decompactification, with possible implications for the cosmological coincidence problem.…
Strong (sublattice or tower) formulations of the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) imply that, if a weakly coupled gauge theory exists, a tower of charged particles drives the theory to strong coupling at an ultraviolet scale well below the…
We examine the minimal constraints imposed by the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) on the particle spectrum of a quantum gravity theory. Towers of super-extremal states have previously been argued to be required for consistency of the WGC…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture postulates the existence of superextremal charged particles, i.e. those with mass smaller than or equal to their charge in Planck units. We present further evidence for our recent observation that in known…
We prove that higher-dimension operators contribute positively to the entropy of a thermodynamically stable black hole at fixed mass and charge. Our results apply whenever the dominant corrections originate at tree level from quantum field…
Supersymmetric closed string theories contain an infinite tower of BPS-saturated, oscillating, macroscopic strings in the perturbative spectrum. When these theories have dual formulations, this tower of states must exist nonperturbatively…
The classical Bekenstein entropy of a black hole is argued to arise from configurations of strings with ends which are frozen on the horizon. Quantum corrections to this entropy are probably finite unlike the case in quantum field theory.…
The species scale provides a lower bound on the shortest possible length that can be probed in gravitational effective theories. It may be defined by the size of the minimal black hole in the theory and, as such, it has recently been given…
The mild form of the Weak Gravity Conjecture states that quantum or higher-derivative corrections should decrease the mass of large extremal charged black holes at fixed charge. This allows extremal black holes to decay, unless protected by…
Charged black holes, both spherically symmetric and rotating, in the low energy limit of string theory (Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory) are compared to analogous geometries in pure general relativity. We describe various physical…
The weak gravity conjecture states that quantum gravity theories have to contain a charged state with a charge-to-mass ratio bigger than unity. By studying unitarity and causality constraints on higher derivative corrections to the…
I review some recent work (done in collaboration with G. Veneziano) which clarifies the existence of a correspondence between self-gravitating fundamental string states and Schwarzschild black holes. The main result is a detailed…
The Distance Conjecture states that an infinite tower of modes becomes exponentially light when approaching an infinite distance point in field space. We argue that the inherent path-dependence of this statement can be addressed when…