Positivity of gravitational path integral inner products requires non-perturbative instabilities in axion wormholes that break shift symmetry, implying a sharp axion weak gravity conjecture with precise constants.
Weak Gravity Strongly Constrains Large-Field Axion Inflation
3 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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abstract
Models of large-field inflation based on axion-like fields with shift symmetries can be simple and natural, and make a promising prediction of detectable primordial gravitational waves. The Weak Gravity Conjecture is known to constrain the simplest case in which a single compact axion descends from a gauge field in an extra dimension. We argue that the Weak Gravity Conjecture also constrains a variety of theories of multiple compact axions including N-flation and some alignment models. We show that other alignment models entail surprising consequences for how the mass spectrum of the theory varies across the axion moduli space, and hence can be excluded if further conjectures hold. In every case that we consider, plausible assumptions lead to field ranges that cannot be parametrically larger than the Planck scale. Our results are strongly suggestive of a general inconsistency in models of large-field inflation based on compact axions, and possibly of a more general principle forbidding super-Planckian field ranges.
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background 2representative citing papers
An analytic bound on axion parameters in thawing quintessence is derived independently of initial conditions and used with cosmological observations plus quantum gravity constraints to exclude large regions of axion dark energy parameter space.
The paper verifies the bound fS/|n| ≤ (π/(2 κ_d)) sqrt((d-1)/(d-2)) for axion instantons and sharpens it to fS/|n| ≤ (1/κ_4) sqrt(7/2) for supersymmetric 4d instantons using three approaches in the string landscape.
citing papers explorer
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Positivity of the gravitational path integral implies the axionic weak gravity conjecture
Positivity of gravitational path integral inner products requires non-perturbative instabilities in axion wormholes that break shift symmetry, implying a sharp axion weak gravity conjecture with precise constants.
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Bounding axion dark energy
An analytic bound on axion parameters in thawing quintessence is derived independently of initial conditions and used with cosmological observations plus quantum gravity constraints to exclude large regions of axion dark energy parameter space.
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Sharpening the Supersymmetric Axion Weak Gravity Conjecture
The paper verifies the bound fS/|n| ≤ (π/(2 κ_d)) sqrt((d-1)/(d-2)) for axion instantons and sharpens it to fS/|n| ≤ (1/κ_4) sqrt(7/2) for supersymmetric 4d instantons using three approaches in the string landscape.