Related papers: The String Landscape, Black Holes and Gravity as t…
It is widely believed and in part established that exact global symmetries are inconsistent with quantum gravity. One then expects that approximate global symmetries can be quantitatively constrained by quantum gravity or swampland…
The string theory swampland proposes that there is no UV-completion for an effective field theory with an exact (metastable) de Sitter vacua, thereby ruling out standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology if the conjecture is taken seriously. The…
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…
The gauge symmetry $SU(5) \times U(1)_\chi$ is the unique maximal subgroup of SO(10) which retains manifest unification at $M_{GUT}$ of the Standard Model gauge couplings, especially if low scale supersymmetry is present. The spontaneous…
The energy condition inequalities for the matter stress energy comprised out of the dilaton and Maxwell fields in the dilaton-Maxwell gravity theories emerging out of string theory are examined in detail. In the simplistic 1+1 dimensional…
The existence of a new ultraviolet scale $\Lambda=g M_P$ for effective theories with gravity and U(1) gauge fields has recently been conjectured as a possible criterion for distinguishing parts of the swampland from the string landscape.…
String theory provides the only consistent framework so far that unifies all interactions including gravity. We discuss gravity and cosmology in string theory. Conventional notions from general relativity like geometry, topology etc. are…
In theories with discrete Abelian gauge groups, requiring that black holes be able to lose their charge as they evaporate leads to an upper bound on the product of a charged particle's mass and the cutoff scale above which the effective…
We develop the effective worldvolume theory for the dynamics of black branes with charges of the kind that arise in many supergravities and low-energy limits of string theory. Using this theory, we construct numerous new rotating black…
It is suggested that the Minkowski vacuum of quantum field theories of a large number of fields N would be gravitationally unstable due to strong vacuum energy fluctuations unless an N dependent sub-Planckian ultraviolet momentum cutoff is…
We use type I string models with supersymmetry broken by compactification (\`a la Scherk-Schwarz) in order to test the weak gravity conjecture in the presence of runaway potentials in a perturbative string theory setting. For a finite value…
Infinite distance limits in the moduli space of a quantum gravity theory are characterized by having infinite towers of states becoming light, as dictated by the Distance Conjecture in the Swampland program. These towers imply a drastic…
It is conventionally believed that if a ball of matter of mass $M$ has a radius close to $2GM$ then it must collapse to a black hole. But string theory microstates (fuzzballs) have no horizon or singularity, and they do {\it not} collapse.…
The strong coupling limit of a quantum system is in general quite complicated, but in some cases a great simplification occurs: the strongly coupled limit is equivalent to the weakly coupled limit of some other system. In string theory…
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…
Quantum aspects of black holes represent an important testing ground for a theory of quantum gravity. The recent success of string theory in reproducing the Bekenstein-Hawking black hole entropy formula provides a link between general…
Superstring theory, and a recent extension called M theory, are leading candidates for a quantum theory that unifies gravity with the other forces. As such, they are certainly not ordinary quantum field theories. However, recent duality…
Analysis of string interactions indicates a weakening of gravity at the string length scale, thus avoiding black holes and their singularities.
Weak gravity conjecture can be formulated as a statement that gravity must be the weakest force, compared to the other interactions in low energy effective field theory (EFT). Several arguments in favor of this statement were presented from…
Common features of known quantum gravity theories may hint at the general nature of quantum gravity. The absence of continuous global symmetries is one such feature. This inspired the Weak Gravity Conjecture, which bounds masses of charged…