Gauge and gravitational instantons: from 3-forms and fermions to weak gravity and flat axion potentials

DOI10.1007/JHEP09(2019)038zbMATH Open1423.83014arXiv1906.07728OpenAlexW3105863835WikidataQ127280852 ScholiaQ127280852MaRDI QIDQ2332201FDOQ2332201

Authors: Arthur Hebecker, Philipp Henkenjohann 

Publication date: 1 November 2019

Published in: Journal of High Energy Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We investigate the role of gauge and gravitational instantons in the context of the Swampland program. Our focus is on the global symmetry breaking they induce, especially in the presence of fermions. We first recall and make more precise the description of the dilute instanton gas through a 3-form gauge theory. In this language, the familiar suppression of instanton effects by light fermions can be understood as the decoupling of the 3-form. Even if all fermions remain massive, such decoupling may occur on the basis of an explicitly unbroken but anomalous global symmetry in the fermionic sector. This should be forbidden by quantum gravity, which leads us to conjecture a related, cutoff-dependent lower bound on the induced axion potential. Finally, we note that the gravitational counterpart of the above are K3 instantons. These are small fluctuations of Euclidean spacetime with K3 topology, which induce fermionic operators analogous to the 't Hooft vertex in gauge theories. Although Planck-suppressed, they may be phenomenologically relevant if accompanied by other higher-dimension fermion operators or if the K3 carries appropriate gauge fluxes.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.07728

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zbMATH Keywords

effective field theoriesglobal symmetriessolitons monopoles and instantonssuperstring vacua

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

(K3) surfaces and Enriques surfaces (14J28) Soliton equations (35Q51) Model quantum field theories (81T10) Exact solutions to problems in general relativity and gravitational theory (83C15) Quantization of the gravitational field (83C45) Relativistic gravitational theories other than Einstein's, including asymmetric field theories (83D05) String and superstring theories in gravitational theory (83E30)

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Cited In (7)

• Towards a swampland global symmetry conjecture using weak gravity
• The \(F\)-term problem and other challenges of stringy quintessence
• On the 3-form formulation of axion potentials from D-brane instantons
• Instanton expansions and phase transitions
• Non-Gaussianities in models of inflation with large and negative entropic masses
• Chern-Weil global symmetries and how quantum gravity avoids them
• Approximate symmetries and gravity

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