IR/UV Mixing, Towers of Species and Swampland Conjectures

Abstract

By applying the Covariant Entropy Bound (CEB) to an EFT in a box of size $1/{\Lambda }_{\text{IR}}$ one obtains that the UV and IR cut-offs of the EFT are necessarily correlated. We argue that in a theory of Quantum Gravity (QG) one should identify the UV cutoff with the `species scale', and give a general algorithm to calculate it in the case of multiple towers becoming light. One then obtains an upper bound on the characteristic mass scale of the tower in terms of the IR cut-off, given by $M_{\text{tower}}\lesssim ({\Lambda }_{\text{IR}}{)}^{2{\alpha }_D}$ in Planck units, with ${\alpha }_D=(D-2+p)/2p(D-1)$, where $p$ depends on the density of states. Identifying the IR cut-off with a (non-vanishing) curvature in AdS one reproduces the statement of the AdS Distance Conjecture (ADC), also giving an explicit lower bound for the $\alpha$ exponent. In particular, we find that the CEB implies $\alpha \ge 1/2$ in any dimension if there is a single KK tower, both in AdS and dS vacua. However values $\alpha <1/2$ are allowed if the particle tower is multiple or has a string component. We also consider the CKN constraint coming from avoiding gravitational collapse which further requires in general $\alpha \ge 1/D$ for the lightest tower. We analyse the case of the DGKT-CFI class of Type IIA orientifold models and show it has both particle and string towers below the species scale, so that a careful analysis of how the ADC is defined is needed. We find that this class of models obey but do not saturate the CEB. The UV/IR constraints found apply to both AdS and dS vacua. We comment on possible applications of these ideas to the dS Swampland conjecture as well as to the observed dS phase of the universe.

19 pages, 4 figures. v2: minor corrections, references added. v3: minor corrections and comments added

References in corpus (22)

• On the Geometry of the String Landscape and the Swampland
• The Swampland: Introduction and Review
• The String Landscape and the Swampland
• Lectures on the Swampland Program in String Compactifications
• The web of swampland conjectures and the TCC bound
• O-plane Backreaction and Scale Separation in Type IIA Flux Vacua
• The Gravitino and the Swampland
• Dimensional Reduction and (Anti) de Sitter Bounds
• The FL bound and its phenomenological implications
• Finiteness and the Swampland
• Scale-separated AdS${}_4$ vacua of IIA orientifolds and M-theory
• A Gravitino Distance Conjecture
• Discrete Symmetries, Weak Coupling Conjecture and Scale Separation in AdS Vacua
• Entropy, Entanglement and Swampland Bounds in DS/dS
• On AdS${}_7$ stability
• On scale separation in type II AdS flux vacua
• Weak gravity versus de Sitter
• The unbearable lightness of charged gravitini
• Distance Conjecture and De-Sitter Quantum Gravity
• Gravitational contributions to the electron $g$-factor
• Implication of the swampland distance conjecture on the Cohen-Kaplan-Nelson bound in de Sitter space
• A Note on the Swampland Distance Conjecture

Cited by in corpus (25)

• The Dark Dimension and the Swampland
• The Emergence Proposal in Quantum Gravity and the Species Scale
• EFT strings and emergence
• Minimal Black Holes and Species Thermodynamics
• Shedding black hole light on the emergent string conjecture
• (Quasi-) de Sitter solutions across dimensions and the TCC bound
• On the Origin of Species Thermodynamics and the Black Hole - Tower Correspondence
• Cosmic evolution of the logarithmic f(R) model and the dS swampland conjecture
• To curve, or not to curve: Is curvature-assisted quintessence observationally viable?
• Does the Cosmological Constant really indicate the existence of a Dark Dimension?
• Gravity from thermodynamics: optimal transport and negative effective dimensions
• (In)stability of de Sitter vacuum in light of distance conjecture and emergence proposal
• Relative scale separation in orbifolds of $S^2$ and $S^5$
• Axion species scale and axion weak gravity conjecture-like bound
• Lectures in Quantum Gravity
• Von Neumann algebra description of inflationary cosmology
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Swampland: The Cosmologist's Handbook to the string-theoretical Swampland Programme
• Does the Vacuum Gravitate on Microscopic Scales? Rydberg Atoms Indicate Probably Not
• Black hole production, eternal inflation, and information in quasi-de Sitter space
• Holographic phenomenology via overlapping degrees of freedom
• Bounds on complex structure moduli values for perturbative control
• A domain wall bound on anti-de Sitter vacua
• Background instability of quintessence model in light of entropy and distance conjecture
• Species scale associated with Weinberg operator and bound on Majorana neutrino mass
• Tame Complexity of Effective Field Theories in the Quantum Gravity Landscape