Related papers: Wormholes in the axiverse, and the species scale
We employ the effective field theory approach to analyze the characteristics of Euclidean wormholes within axion theories. Using this approach, we obtain non-perturbative instantons in various complex scalar models with and without a…
As a cutoff scale of quantum gravity, the species scale can be defined by the scale at which the perturbativity of the non-renormalizable gravitational interaction begins to break down. Since it is determined by the number of species in the…
Some of the simplest wormhole solutions involve massless scalar fields that take imaginary values. Massless fields can be interpreted as coupling constants in asymptotically flat or asymptotically AdS gravity theories. We argue that…
The species scale provides an upper bound for the ultraviolet cutoff of effective theories of gravity coupled to a number of light particle species. We point out that modular invariant (super-)potentials provide a simple and computable…
There exist non-trivial stationary points of the Euclidean action for an axion particle minimally coupled to Einstein gravity, dubbed wormholes. They explicitly break the continuos global shift symmetry of the axion in a non-perturbative…
The species scale $\Lambda_s\leq M_{pl}$ serves as a UV cutoff in the gravitational sector of an EFT and can depend on the moduli of the theory as the spectrum of the theory varies. We argue that the dependence of the species scale…
We provide a moduli-dependent definition of species scale in quantum gravity based on black hole arguments. Concretely, it is derived from of a lower bound on the entropy of extremal black holes with higher curvature corrections, which…
If Euclidean wormholes contribute meaningfully to the path integral of quantum gravity they can have important implications for particle physics and cosmology. The dominant effects arise from wormholes whose sizes are comparable to the…
We derive and study a class of cosmological and wormhole solutions of low-energy effective string field theory. We consider a general four-dimensional string effective action where moduli of the compactified manifold and the electromagnetic…
In the context of the Swampland program, black hole attractors have been employed to probe infinite distances in moduli space, where the EFT cutoff goes to zero in Planck units and UV effects become significant. In this paper, we take the…
We conjecture an intrinsic UV cutoff for the validity of the effective field theory with a large number of species coupled to gravity. In four dimensions such a UV cutoff takes the form $\Lambda=\sqrt{\lambda/ N}M_p$ for $N$ scalar fields…
We present a wormhole solution in four dimensions. It is a solution of an Einstein Maxwell theory plus charged massless fermions. The fermions give rise to a negative Casimir-like energy, which makes the wormhole possible. It is a long…
We give two new analytical solutions to the low-energy string theory action that violate the weak cosmic censorship conjecture. They are classical charged solutions to the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory in four dimensions that come in two…
The most natural expectation away from asymptotic limits in moduli space of supergravity theories is the desert scenario, where there are few states between massless fields and the quantum gravity cutoff. In this paper we initiate a…
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…
Axions play a central role in inflationary model building and other cosmological applications. This is mainly due to their flat potential, which is protected by a global shift symmetry. However, quantum gravity is known to break global…
We construct the most general non-extremal spherically symmetric instanton solution of a gravity-dilaton-axion system with $SL(2,R)$ symmetry, for arbitrary euclidean spacetime dimension $D\geq 3$. A subclass of these solutions describe…
I prove that general relativity admits no asymptotically well-behaved static spherically symmetric traversable wormholes supported by classical scalar fields and nonexotic matter. The theorem holds for all values of the scalar field…
Continuous global symmetries are expected to be broken by gravity, which can lead to important phenomenological consequences. A prime example is the threat that this poses to the viability of the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong CP…
The scale at which quantum gravity becomes manifest, the species scale $\Lambda_s$, has recently been argued to take values parametrically lower than the Planck scale. We use black holes of vanishing horizon area (small black holes) in…