Emergence of Weak Coupling at Large Distance in Quantum Gravity
The Ooguri-Vafa swampland conjectures claim that in any consistent theory of quantum gravity, when venturing to large distances in scalar field space, a tower of particles will become light at a rate that is exponential in the field-space distance. We provide a novel viewpoint on this claim: If we assume that a tower of states becomes light near a particular point in field space, and we further demand that loop corrections drive both gravity and the scalar to strong coupling at a common energy scale, then the requirement that the particles become light exponentially fast in the field-space distance in Planck units follows automatically. Furthermore, the same assumption of a common strong-coupling scale for scalar fields and gravitons implies that, when a scalar field evolves over a super-Planckian distance, the average particle mass changes by an amount of the order of the cutoff energy. This supports earlier suggestions that significantly super-Planckian excursions in field space cannot be described within a single effective field theory. We comment on the relationship of our results to the weak gravity conjecture.
- Research Organization:
- Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0013607
- OSTI ID:
- 1462782
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1498972
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Vol. 121 Journal Issue: 5; ISSN 0031-9007
- Publisher:
- American Physical SocietyCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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