Related papers: The Generalized Scalar Weak Gravity Conjecture and…
We point out that the swampland conjectures, forbidding the presence of global symmetries and (meta-)stable de Sitter vacua within quantum gravity, pick up a dynamical axion for the electroweak SU(2) gauge theory as a natural candidate for…
Scalar singlet dark matter is one of the simplest and most predictive realisations of the WIMP (weakly-interacting massive particle) idea. Although the model is constrained from all directions by the latest experimental data, it still has…
Scalar-tensor theories of gravity modify General Relativity by introducing a scalar field that couples non-minimally to the metric tensor, while satisfying the weak-equivalence principle. These theories are interesting because they have the…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture is typically stated as a bound on the mass-to-charge ratio of a particle in the theory. Alternatively, it has been proposed that its natural formulation is in terms of the existence of a particle which is…
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…
The magnitude and sign of the gravitational coupling $1/G$ depend on the relations between different contributions from scalar, fermionic and vector fields. In principle, this may give the zero and negative values of $1/G$ in some…
The weak gravity conjecture has been proposed as a criterion to distinguish the landscape from the swampland in string theory. As an application in cosmology of this conjecture, we use it to impose theoretical constraint on parameters of…
Causality constrains the gravitational interactions of massive higher spin particles in both AdS and flat spacetime. We explore the extent to which these constraints apply to composite particles, explaining why they do not rule out…
General Relativity (GR) exists in different formulations. They are equivalent in pure gravity but generically lead to distinct predictions once matter is included. After a brief overview of various versions of GR, we focus on metric-affine…
We offer a discussion on the strong field regime predictions of two families of theories that deviate from General Relativity in different aspects: $f(R)$-gravity and Scalar-Tensor-Vector Gravity (STVG). We discuss astrophysical effects in…
The Axion Weak Gravity Conjecture provides one of the most effective quantum gravity tools for constraining particle physics and cosmology, but it has long been thought of as a slightly fuzzy statement: given an axion with decay constant…
The algebra of non-commutative differential geometry (NCG) on the discrete space $M_4\times Z\ma{N}$ previously proposed by the present author is improved to give the consistent explanation of the generalized gauge field as the generalized…
Positivity bounds coming from consistency of UV scattering amplitudes are in general insufficient to prove the weak gravity conjecture for theories beyond Einstein-Maxwell. Additional ingredients about the UV may be necessary to exclude…
We point out that the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) implies that sufficiently small extremal black holes are necessarily in the strong-field regime of electrodynamics, and therefore probe the UV completion of the Maxwell sector. To…
A modified theory of general relativity is proposed, where the gravitational constant is replaced by a dynamical variable in space-time. The dynamics of the gravitational coupling is described by a family of parametrized null geodesics,…
According to a conjecture recently put forward in arXiv:1806.08362, the scalar potential $V$ of any consistent theory of quantum gravity satisfies a bound $|\nabla V|/V \geq {\cal O}(1)$. This forbids dS solutions and supports quintessence…
The Sharpened Distance Conjecture and Tower Scalar Weak Gravity Conjecture are closely related but distinct conjectures, neither one implying the other. Motivated by examples, I propose that both are consequences of two new conjectures: 1.…
We study extensions of the Standard Model with general new vector bosons. The full Standard Model gauge symmetry is used to classify the extra vectors and constrain their couplings. We derive the corresponding effective Lagrangian, valid at…
Conventionally, the strong-$CP$ problem is assumed to be a naturalness puzzle, with the axion solution sometimes viewed as an ad hoc fix. Gravity is either ignored or taken as a threat for the global Peccei-Quinn symmetry. We explain that…
The current cosmological bound on the invisible axion scale may be avoided in the class of theories in which the gauge coupling constant is determined through the expectation value of some scalar field (e.g. moduli in supergravity and…