Swampland Conjectures for strings and membranes

Abstract

Swampland criteria like the Weak Gravity Conjecture should not only apply to particles, but also to other lower-codimension charged objects in 4d EFTs like strings and membranes. However, the description of the latter is in general subtle due to their large backreaction effects. In the context of 4d $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 1 EFTs, we consider $$ \frac{1}{2} $$ 1 2 BPS strings and membranes which are fundamental, in the sense that they cannot be resolved within the EFT regime. We argue that, if interpreted from the EFT viewpoint, the 4d backreaction of these objects translates into a classical RG flow of their couplings. Constraints on the UV charges and tensions get then translated to constraints on the axionic kinetic terms and scalar potential of the EFT. This uncovers new relations among the Swampland Conjectures, which become interconnected by the physical properties of low-codimension objects. In particular, using that string RG flows describe infinite field distance limits, we show that the WGC for strings implies the Swampland Distance Conjecture. Similarly, WGC-saturating membranes generate a scalar potential satisfying the de Sitter Conjecture.

Phases of holographic interfaces

“…Light domain walls follow closely geodesic curves, and avoid the horizon in a large region of parameter space. 26 Comparing the left with the right figure 11 shows that heavy walls facilitate the formation of the black hole and have a harder time staying outside. Indeed, in the right figure the HP transition occurs at lower T , and the warm phase recedes to L 1 L 2 .…”

“…[12][13][14], in toy models of black hole evaporation [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Besides being a simple form of matter coupled to gravity, domain walls are also a key ingredient [24] in effective descriptions of the string-theory landscape -see [25][26][27] for some recent discussions of domain walls in this context. 1 In this paper we study a thin static domain wall between Anti-de Sitter (AdS) vacua, anchored at the conformal boundary of spacetime.…”

Quantum corrections in 4d N = 1 infinite distance limits and the weak gravity conjecture

“…However, the case x < 0 is different: Recall that here, at least for smooth Weierstrass models Y 4 over B 3 , we found no kinematic obstruction at O(α 2 ) to taking the vanishing fiber limit, in agreement with the fact that such limits would be perfectly well-defined. This raises the question whether a non-perturbative superpotential can obstruct such a kinematically allowed 16 infinite distance emergent string limit. In the following, we give some preliminary arguments based on simple examples why we expect this not to be the case.…”

“…To see this note that the expressions for the tension and the charge of the BPS string under the 2-from gauge symmetry, obtained by reducing C 4 along the rational fiber, (5.42) are not affected by the correction terms and hence satisfy the no-force condition (see e.g. [16])…”

“…other hand, arise when solitonic strings due to wrapped branes become weakly coupled and acquire a tension comparable with M 2 KK [5,[12][13][14][15]. The special role played by tensionless strings to understand the Swampland Distance Conjecture in four dimensions has also been stressed in [16], which studies in particular the backreaction of such strings on the fields in an N = 1 supersymmetric effective action.…”