Supersymmetric Protection and the Swampland

Abstract

For certain terms in the action, supersymmetry can forbid an infinite number of possible contributions. We study whether such protection can occur in quantum gravity even without sufficient supersymmetry. We focus on whether the superpotential can vanish exactly in four-dimensional N=1 theories, and if the prepotential can be exactly cubic in N=2 theories. We investigate these questions in string theory and find that for almost all known string constructions the corrections allowed by supersymmetry do occur. However, we do find some special settings where all the corrections can be proven to vanish. These examples all share the common feature that they are related, through a certain orbifolding by a discrete gauged R-symmetry element, to a higher supersymmetric theory. Motivated by these results, we propose a Swampland criterion that any theory which enjoys such protection beyond its realised supersymmetry must have a direct connection to a higher supersymmetric theory.

44 pages

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• Recent Advances on Inflation
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• The Gravitino and the Swampland
• Scale-separated AdS${}_4$ vacua of IIA orientifolds and M-theory
• Moduli Space Holography and the Finiteness of Flux Vacua
• Moduli Stabilization in Asymptotic Flux Compactifications
• Weak Gravity Bounds in Asymptotic String Compactifications
• Asymptotic Safety: Swampland or Wonderland?
• Special Geometry and the Swampland
• Loops, Local Corrections and Warping in the LVS and other Type IIB Models
• Inflationary Dynamics and Swampland Criteria for Modified Gauss-Bonnet Gravity Compatible with GW170817
• 4d strings at strong coupling
• Swampland Conjectures and Infinite Flop Chains
• Type IIB flux compactifications with $h^{1,1}=0$
• Leaps and bounds towards scale separation
• Light Strings and Strong Coupling in F-theory
• On ${\alpha }^{\prime }$-effects from $D$-branes in $4d\mathcal{N}=1$
• Swampland geometry and the gauge couplings
• De Sitter Quantum Breaking, Swampland Conjectures and Thermal Strings
• Generalized Vanishing Theorems for Yukawa Couplings in Heterotic Compactifications
• Lectures on Naturalness, String Landscape and Multiverse
• Novel counterexample to the Nelson-Seiberg theorem
• On the Occurrence of Finite-time Singularities in Swampland-related Quintessence Dark Energy Models