Related papers: A new scale in the sky
We present an overview of both older and recent developments concerning scale separation in string theory. We focus on parametric scale separation obtained at the classical level in flux compactifications down to AdS vacua. We review the…
We consider a scalar field $\phi$ whose coupling to the kinetic term of a non-abelian gauge field is set at an UV scale $M$. Then the confinement of the gauge sector will induce a $\phi$-dependent vacuum energy which generates a…
Standard lore asserts that quantum effects generically forbid the occurrence of light (non-pseudo-Goldstone) scalars having masses smaller than the Kaluza Klein scale, M_KK, in extra-dimensional models, or the gravitino mass, M_3/2, in…
Quantum scale invariance in the UV has been recently advocated as an attractive way of solving the gauge hierarchy problem arising in the Standard Model. We explore the cosmological signatures at the electroweak scale when the breaking of…
In this note we consider whether there could be Swampland constraints associated to the presence of fermions in the theory. We propose that any fermion must couple to an infinite tower of states, and that the mass scale of this tower, in…
The biggest question in beyond the standard model physics is what are the scales of new physics. Ideas about scales, as well as experimental evidence and constraints, are surveyed for a variety of possible forms of new physics:…
The recently unveiled deep-field images from the James Webb Space Telescope have renewed interest in what we can and cannot see of the universe. Answering these questions requires understanding the so-called "cosmological horizons" and the…
There can arise ubiquitous ultra-light scalar fields in the Universe, such as the pseudo-Goldstone bosons from the spontaneous breaking of an approximate symmetry, which can make a partial contribution to the dark matter and affect the…
A class of grand unified theories with symmetry breaking scale of order $10^{16} GeV$ have a Higgs particle with mass in the $TeV$ scale. The cosmology of such theories is very different from usual. We study the cosmic strings obtained in…
We investigate the weak gravity bounds on the U(1) gauge theory and scalar field theories in various dimensional noncommutative space. Many results are obtained, such as the upper bound on the noncommutative scale $g_{YM}M_p$ for four…
Three branches of the string theory landscape have plausibly been identified. One of these branches is expected to exhibit a roughly logarithmic distribution of supersymmetry breaking scales. The original KKLT models are in this class. We…
[Abridged] By combining swampland conjectures with observational data, it was recently noted that our universe could stretch off in an asymptotic region of the string landscape of vacua. In this framework, the cosmological hierarchy problem…
We predict new particles at the Tera scale based on the assumptions that the standard model gauge interactions are unified around the gravitational scale with a big desert and new particles originate from hypermultiplets as remnants of…
We present a new scenario for gauge coupling unification in flipped SU(5) string models, which identifies the $M_{32}$ scale of SU(3) and SU(2) unification with the empirical $M_{\rm LEP}\sim10^{15-16}$~GeV scale, and the $M_{51}$ scale of…
The swampland conjectures seek to distinguish effective field theories which can be consistently embedded in a theory of quantum gravity from those which can not (and are hence referred to as being in the swampland). We consider two such…
We make a number of conjectures about the geometry of continuous moduli parameterizing the string landscape. In particular we conjecture that such moduli are always given by expectation value of scalar fields and that moduli spaces with…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) bounds the mass of a particle by its charge. It is expected that this bound can not be below the ultraviolet cut-off scale of the effective theory. Recently, an extension of the WGC was proposed in the…
We discuss a mechanism which generates a mass term for a scalar field in an expanding universe. The mass of this field turns out to be generated by the cosmological constant and can be naturally small if protected by a conformal symmetry…
We present a novel scenario where a scalar field acquires a mass which depends on the local matter density: the field is massive on Earth, where the density is high, but is essentially free in the solar system, where the density is low. All…
The transcendental expectation of string theory is that the nature of the fundamental forces, particle spectra and masses, together with coupling constants, is uniquely determined by mathematical and logical consistency, non-empirically,…