Nordita HEP Local Seminars

Cosmological aspects of the Swampland

by Eran Paltin (MAX-PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR PHYSICS, MUNICH)

Europe/Stockholm
132:028 (Nordita East)

132:028 (Nordita East)

Description
The Swampland programme aims at distinguishing quantum field theories which can be completed into quantum gravity in the ultraviolet from those which cannot. I will outline relations between different conjectural properties of the Swampland, showing how a coherent picture is emerging, and discuss a proposal for the microscopic physics underlying them. I will focus in particular on the Swampland Distance Conjecture which is concerned with large variations of scalar field expectation values, physics which often features in theoretical cosmology. I will then discuss a proposed connection between this conjecture and the Swampland de Sitter conjecture. The latter gives a lower bound on the gradient of positive potentials, in particular implying that dark energy must be varying in time rather than being a cosmological constant. Finally, time permitting, I will discuss Swampland constraints on massive spin-2 fields.