Inflation, Higher Spins and the Swampland

Abstract

We study the implications on inflation of an infinite tower of higher-spin states with masses falling exponentially at large field distances, as dictated by the Swampland Distance Conjecture. We show that the Higuchi lower bound on the mass of the tower automatically translates into an upper bound on the inflaton excursion. Strikingly, the mere existence of all spins in the tower forbids any scalar displacement whatsoever, at arbitrarily small Hubble scales, and it turns out therefore incompatible with inflation. A certain field excursion is allowed only if the tower has a cut-off in spin. Finally, we show that this issue is circumvented in the case of a tower of string excitations precisely because of the existence of such a cut-off, which decreases fast enough in field space.

arXiv comment12 pages, 2 figures. v2: minor clarifications and refs added. PLB version

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• Aspects of the Dark Dimension in Cosmology
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• Rejuvenating the hope of a swampland consistent inflated multiverse with tachyonic inflation in the high energy RS-II Braneworld
• Swampland conjectures and single field inflation in non-standard cosmological scenarios
• Bulk/boundary Modular Quintessence and DESI
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Swampland: The Cosmologist's Handbook to the string-theoretical Swampland Programme
• Mass and spin for classical strings in $d{S}_3$
• Inflationary constraints on the moduli-dependent species scale in modular invariant theories
• Implications of single field inflation in general cosmological scenarios on the nature of dark energy given the swampland conjectures