Dispersive bootstrap with unitarity, crossing and a Virasoro-inspired ansatz isolates the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude in a small island for the gravity-pole-subtracted four-point amplitude in 10D supersymmetry.
The Weak Gravity Conjecture and Effective Field Theory
4 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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abstract
The Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) is a proposed constraint on theories with gauge fields and gravity, requiring the existence of light charged particles and/or imposing an upper bound on the field theory cutoff $\Lambda$. If taken as a consistency requirement for effective field theories (EFTs), it rules out possibilities for model-building including some models of inflation. I demonstrate simple models which satisfy all forms of the WGC, but which through Higgsing of the original gauge fields produce low-energy EFTs with gauge forces that badly violate the WGC. These models illustrate specific loopholes in arguments that motivate the WGC from a bottom-up perspective; for example the arguments based on magnetic monopoles are evaded when the magnetic confinement that occurs in a Higgs phase is accounted for. This indicates that the WGC should not be taken as a veto on EFTs, even if it turns out to be a robust property of UV quantum gravity theories. However, if the latter is true then parametric violation of the WGC at low energy comes at the cost of non-minimal field content in the UV. I propose that only a very weak constraint is applicable to EFTs, $\Lambda \lesssim \left(-\log g \right)^{-1/2} M_\text{pl}$ where $g$ is the gauge coupling, motivated by entropy bounds. Remarkably, EFTs produced by Higgsing a theory that satisfies the WGC can saturate but not violate this bound.
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background 1representative citing papers
Thermodynamic consistency in thermal scalar EFTs requires the Wilson coefficient of the leading dimension-8 operator to be strictly positive.
A sampling-based bootstrap for graviton poles in EFTs yields non-projective bounds that fix the EFT cutoff scale relative to the Planck mass, with M/M_P ≲ 7.8 in D=5.
Surviving inflationary histories develop a universal inward drift near any hard swampland boundary — two times the diffusion over the distance to the edge — regardless of the cutoff's microscopic origin.
citing papers explorer
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A Dispersive Bootstrap for the Virasoro-Shapiro Amplitude
Dispersive bootstrap with unitarity, crossing and a Virasoro-inspired ansatz isolates the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude in a small island for the gravity-pole-subtracted four-point amplitude in 10D supersymmetry.
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Positivity bounds from thermal field theory entropy
Thermodynamic consistency in thermal scalar EFTs requires the Wilson coefficient of the leading dimension-8 operator to be strictly positive.
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Sampling the Graviton Pole and Deprojecting the Swampland
A sampling-based bootstrap for graviton poles in EFTs yields non-projective bounds that fix the EFT cutoff scale relative to the Planck mass, with M/M_P ≲ 7.8 in D=5.
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Stochastic Survival near Swampland Boundaries
Surviving inflationary histories develop a universal inward drift near any hard swampland boundary — two times the diffusion over the distance to the edge — regardless of the cutoff's microscopic origin.