Related papers: Axion species scale and axion weak gravity conject…
We study ultraviolet cutoffs associated with the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) and Sublattice Weak Gravity Conjecture (sLWGC). There is a magnetic WGC cutoff at the energy scale $e G_N^{-1/2}$ with an associated sLWGC tower of charged…
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…
We consider the axion arising from five-dimensional supergravity in the presence of boundaries. We find the approximate bosonic effective action to estimate the lower bound on the "Peccei-Quinn" energy scale with a flat bulk. With a warped…
The species scale is the energy scale at which quantum corrections to Einstein's theory of gravity become significant. In many cases, this scale corresponds to the string mass scale, which can be much lower than the Planck scale in the weak…
The clockwork axion refers to a family of aligned multi-axion models that lead to an exponential hierarchy between the scale of Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking and the scale of the axion decay constant. The clockworking can bring the…
We show that lowering of the gravitational cutoff relative to the Planck mass, imposed by black hole physics in theories with N species, has an independent justification from quantum information theory. First, this scale marks the limiting…
Composite axion scenarios offer a robust field theoretic justification for the existence of a Peccei-Quinn symmetry of high quality. We present a new class of realizations that are naturally embedded in Grand-Unified Theories, retain…
We consider effective theories with massive fields that have spins larger than or equal to two. We conjecture a universal cutoff scale on any such theory that depends on the lightest mass of such fields. This cutoff corresponds to the mass…
Axions arising as modes of higher-dimensional gauge fields are known to offer a compelling solution to the axion quality problem and to naturally arise in string theory. In this context, it is interesting to ask how we would interpret an…
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 show that axion phenomenology may be significantly different than conventionally assumed in theories which exhibit late phase transitions (below the QCD scale). In such theories one can find multiple pseudoscalars with axion-like…
The QCD axion is widely studied as a dark matter (DM) candidate and as a solution to the strong CP problem of the Standard Model. In conventional field-theoretic models, a much larger mass scale than the electroweak (EW) scale is typically…
Based on well-known properties of semi-classical black holes, we show that weakly-coupled string theory can be viewed as a theory of N = 1/g_s^2 particle species. This statement is a string theoretic realization of the fact that the…
The characteristic axion couplings could be generated via effective couplings between the Standard Model (SM) fermions to a pseudo-Goldstone from a high-scale $U(1)$ Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry breaking. Assuming that the UV-induced…
We prove a version of the Weak Gravity Conjecture for 6d F-theory or heterotic string compactifications with 8 supercharges. This sharpens our previous analysis by including massless scalar fields. The latter are known to modify the Weak…
We present a novel way in which effective field theory (EFT) can break down in cosmological string backgrounds depending on the behavior of the quantum gravity cutoff in infinite distance limits, known as the species scale $\Lambda_s$.…
While axions seem ubiquitous in critical string theories, whether they might survive in any string theoretic description of nature is a difficult question. With some mild assumptions, one can frame the issues in the case that there is an…
The theory of a single massive graviton has a cutoff much below its Planck scale, because the extra modes from the graviton multiplet involve higher derivative self-interactions, controlled by a scale convoluted from the small graviton…
We derive the cutoff length scale of the quadratic gravity in $d \geq 5$ dimensional spacetime by demanding that the quantum focusing conjecture for the smeared quantum expansion holds at the classical level. The cutoff scale has different…
Models of large-field inflation based on axion-like fields with shift symmetries can be simple and natural, and make a promising prediction of detectable primordial gravitational waves. The Weak Gravity Conjecture is known to constrain the…