TY - JOUR
T1 - The weak gravity conjecture and scalar fields
AU - Palti, Eran
N1 - Funding Information:
I would like to thank Arthur Hebecker and Pablo Soler for extremly helpful discussions. I am supported by the Heidelberg Graduate School of Fundamental Physics.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, The Author(s).
PY - 2017/8/1
Y1 - 2017/8/1
N2 - We propose a generalisation of the Weak Gravity Conjecture in the presence of scalar fields. The proposal is guided by properties of extremal black holes in N= 2 supergravity, but can be understood more generally in terms of forbidding towers of stable gravitationally bound states. It amounts to the statement that there must exist a particle on which the gauge force acts more strongly than gravity and the scalar forces combined. We also propose that the scalar force itself should act on this particle stronger than gravity. This implies that generically the mass of this particle decreases exponentially as a function of the scalar field expectation value for super-Planckian variations, which is behaviour predicted by the Refined Swampland Conjecture. In the context of N= 2 supergravity the Weak Gravity Conjecture bound can be tied to bounds on scalar field distances in field space. Guided by this, we present a general proof that for any linear combination of moduli in any Calabi-Yau compactification of string theory the proper field distance grows at best logarithmically with the moduli values for super-Planckian distances.
AB - We propose a generalisation of the Weak Gravity Conjecture in the presence of scalar fields. The proposal is guided by properties of extremal black holes in N= 2 supergravity, but can be understood more generally in terms of forbidding towers of stable gravitationally bound states. It amounts to the statement that there must exist a particle on which the gauge force acts more strongly than gravity and the scalar forces combined. We also propose that the scalar force itself should act on this particle stronger than gravity. This implies that generically the mass of this particle decreases exponentially as a function of the scalar field expectation value for super-Planckian variations, which is behaviour predicted by the Refined Swampland Conjecture. In the context of N= 2 supergravity the Weak Gravity Conjecture bound can be tied to bounds on scalar field distances in field space. Guided by this, we present a general proof that for any linear combination of moduli in any Calabi-Yau compactification of string theory the proper field distance grows at best logarithmically with the moduli values for super-Planckian distances.
KW - Black Holes in String Theory
KW - Effective Field Theories
KW - Models of Quantum Gravity
KW - Superstring Vacua
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85027845025&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/JHEP08(2017)034
DO - 10.1007/JHEP08(2017)034
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85027845025
SN - 1126-6708
VL - 2017
JO - Journal of High Energy Physics
JF - Journal of High Energy Physics
IS - 8
M1 - 34
ER -