Reflections on an M-theoretic Emergence Proposal

Abstract

In a pedagogical manner, we review recent developments in the investigation of the Emergence Proposal. Although it is fair to say that this idea is still at an exploratory level and a fully coherent picture has yet to be developed, we put it into perspective to previous work on the swampland program and on emergence in QG. In view of the emergent string conjecture, we argue and provide evidence that it is not the emergent string but rather the decompactification limit which is a natural candidate for the potential realization of the Emergence Proposal. This resonates in a compelling way with old ideas of emergence in M(-atrix) theory and gives rise to a number of further speculations.

31 pages, 1 figure. Contribution to the proceedings of the Corfu Summer Institute 2023 "School and Workshops on Elementary Particle Physics and Gravity" (CORFU2023), 23 April - 6 May, and 27 August - 1 October, 2023, Corfu, Greece, v2: minor revisions, references added