Sharp boundaries for the swampland
Abstract
We reconsider the problem of bounding higher derivative couplings in consistent weakly coupled gravitational theories, starting from general assumptions about analyticity and Regge growth of the S-matrix. Higher derivative couplings are expected to be of order one in the units of the UV cutoff. Our approach justifies this expectation and allows to prove precise bounds on the order one coefficients. Our main tool are dispersive sum rules for the S-matrix. We overcome the difficulties presented by the graviton pole by measuring couplings at small impact parameter, rather than in the forward limit. We illustrate the method in theories containing a massless scalar coupled to gravity, and in theories with maximal supersymmetry.
Additional Information
© 2021 The Authors. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Article funded by SCOAP3. Received 26 May 2021; Accepted 24 June 2021; Published 16 July 2021. The authors would like to thank Walter Landry, Yue-Zhou Li and Julio Parra Martinez for useful discussions. The work of S.C.-H. is supported by the National Science and Engineering Council of Canada, the Canada Research Chair program, the Fonds de Recherche du Québec — Nature et Technologies, the Simons Collaboration on the Nonperturbative Bootstrap, and the Sloan Foundation. D.M. gratefully acknowledges funding provided by Edward and Kiyomi Baird as well as the grant DE-SC0009988 from the U.S. Department of Energy. The work of L.R. is supported in part by NSF grant # PHY-1915093 and by the Simons Foundation (Simons Collaboration on the Nonperturbative Bootstrap and Simons Investigator Award). D.S.-D. is supported by Simons Foundation grant 488657 (Simons Collaboration on the Nonperturbative Bootstrap) and a DOE Early Career Award under grant no. DE-SC0019085. Some of the computations in this work were performed on the Caltech High-Performance Cluster, partially supported by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.Attached Files
Published - Caron-Huot2021_Article_SharpBoundariesForTheSwampland.pdf
Submitted - 2102.08951.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 110094
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20210730-161344799
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Canada Research Chairs Program
- Fonds de recherche du Québec - Nature et technologies (FRQNT)
- Simons Foundation
- 488657
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Edward and Kiyomi Baird
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0009988
- NSF
- PHY-1915093
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0019085
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- SCOAP3
- Created
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2021-08-02Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-08-02Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics