The desert and the swampland

DOI10.1007/JHEP03(2023)109arXiv2112.11467OpenAlexW4360978573WikidataQ122584065 ScholiaQ122584065MaRDI QIDQ6158611FDOQ6158611

Irene Valenzuela, Cody Long, Miguel Montero, Cumrun Vafa

Publication date: 31 May 2023

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

Abstract: The most natural expectation away from asymptotic limits in moduli space of supergravity theories is the desert scenario, where there are few states between massless fields and the quantum gravity cutoff. In this paper we initiate a systematic study of these regions deep in the moduli space, and use it to place a bound on the number of massless modes by relating it to the black hole species problem. There exists a consistent sub-Planckian UV cutoff (the species scale) which resolves the black hole species problem without bounding the number of light modes. We reevaluate this in the context of supersymmetric string vacua in the desert region and show that even though heuristically the species scale is compatible with expectations, the BPS states of the actual string vacua lead to a stronger dependence of the cutoff scale on the number of massless modes. We propose that this discrepancy, which can be captured by the "BPS desert conjecture", resurrects the idea of a uniform bound on the number of light modes as a way to avoid the black hole species problem. This conjecture also implies a stronger form of the Tadpole Conjecture, which leads to an obstruction in stabilizing all moduli semi-classically for large number of moduli in flux compactifications.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.11467

zbMATH Keywords

black holes in string theoryD-branesextended supersymmetrysuperstring vacua

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Quantum theory (81-XX)

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Cited In (15)

• Demystifying the emergence proposal
• \(E_9\) symmetry in the heterotic string on \(S^1\) and the weak gravity conjecture
• Species scale in diverse dimensions
• The minimal weak gravity conjecture
• Emergence of \(R^4\)-terms in M-theory
• Light strings and strong coupling in F-theory
• Putting the boot into the swampland
• Affine algebras at Infinite distance limits in the heterotic string
• Shedding black hole light on the emergent string conjecture
• On the correspondence between black holes, domain walls and fluxes
• Flux vacua of the mirror octic
• Cosmological chameleons, string theory and the swampland
• Black hole entropy and moduli-dependent species scale
• Bumping into the Species Scale with the Scalar Potential
• Dense geodesics, tower alignment, and the sharpened distance conjecture

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