Related papers: A new scale in the sky
By combining swampland conjectures with observational data, it was recently suggested that the cosmological hierarchy problem (i.e. the smallness of the dark energy in Planck units) could be understood as an asymptotic limit in field space,…
We present an alternative way of tracing the existence of a scalar field based on the analysis of the gravitational wave spectrum of a vibrating neutron star. Scalar-tensor theories in strong-field gravity can potentially introduce much…
We consider the case of several scalar fields, charged under a number of U(1) factors, acquiring vacuum expectation values due to an anomalous U(1). We demonstrate how to make redefinitions at the superfield level in order to account for…
We propose a new swampland conjecture stating that the limit of vanishing gravitino mass corresponds to the massless limit of an infinite tower of states and to the consequent breakdown of the effective field theory. We test our proposal in…
I review briefly, primarily for relativists, a series of recent results, obtained with A. Waldron, on the novel behavior of massive higher (s>1) spin systems in constant curvature backgrounds. We find that the cosmological constant Lambda,…
We show that, as a result of non-linear self-interactions, it is feasible, at least in light of the bounds coming from terrestrial tests of gravity, measurements of the Casimir force and those constraints imposed by the physics of compact…
We study constraints imposed by two proposed string Swampland criteria on cosmology. These criteria involve an upper bound on the range traversed by scalar fields as well as a lower bound on $|\nabla_{\phi} V|/V$ when $V >0$. We find that…
A fundamental spacetime scale in the universe leads to noncommutative spacetime and thence to a modified energy - momentum dispersion relation or equivalently to a modification of Lorentz symmetry as shown by the author and others. This…
Regarding Pauli's matrices as proper Higgs fields one can deduce an effective(!) approximation for gravity in flat space. In this work we extend this approximation up to the second order. Reaching complete agreement in the special case of…
Scalar fields with inverse power-law effective potentials may provide a negative pressure component to the energy density of the universe today, as required by cosmological observations. In order to be cosmologically relevant today, the…
In this letter a new formula for light deflection is derived using only physically observable concepts. The general result is specialized to cosmological perturbation theory and expressed in terms of gauge--invariant perturbation variables.…
String theory has no parameter except the string scale, so a dynamically compactified solution to 4 dimensional spacetime should determine both the Planck scale and the cosmological constant $\Lambda$. In the racetrack K\"ahler uplift flux…
The unification of gauge couplings suggests that there is an underlying (supersymmetric) unification of the strong, electromagnetic and weak interactions. The prediction of the unification scale may be the first quantitative indication that…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
We calculate the gravitational waves (GW) spectrum produced in various Early Universe scenarios from gauge field sources, thus generalizing earlier inflationary calculations to bouncing cosmologies. We consider generic couplings between the…
Extremely large surveys with future experiments like Euclid and the SKA will soon allow us to access perturbation modes close to the Hubble scale, with wavenumbers $k \sim \mathcal{H}$. If a modified gravity theory is responsible for cosmic…
A U(1) gauge theory turns, on physically motivated models of Quantum Spacetime, into a U($\infty$) gauge theory, hence free classical electrodynamics is no longer free and neutral fields may have electromagnetic interactions. We discuss the…
A new theory makes testable predictions: (1) Higgs fields have an unconventional equation of motion. (2) Fermions have a second-order coupling to gauge fields. (3) Fermion propagators are modified at high energy. (4) There are new scalar…
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…
We investigate basic consequences of the assumption that the mass scale of the perturbative sector responsible for the spontaneous symmetry breaking is generated dynamically in a theory with a large UV scale. It is assumed that in addition…