Axion species scale and axion weak gravity conjecture-like bound

Abstract

As a cutoff scale of quantum gravity, the species scale can be defined by the scale at which the perturbativity of the non-renormalizable gravitational interaction begins to break down. Since it is determined by the number of species in the effective field theory, we can find the close connection to the distance conjecture, which predicts the lowering of the cutoff at the asymptotic limit of the moduli space caused by the descent of a tower of states from UV. Meanwhile, the same kind of the cutoff scale can be obtained from any non-renormalizable interaction, in particular the interaction between the axion and the gauge field through the $\theta F\wedge F$ term. Demanding this `axion species scale' not to exceed the gravitational species scale, we obtain the bound $(8{\pi }^2/g^2)f\lesssim M_{\mathrm{Pl}}$. This is quite similar to the axion weak gravity conjecture bound, but can be applied to any gauge as well as the string interactions which are relevant to towers of states. We also investigate the implications of the (axion) species scale and the axion weak gravity conjecture-like bound by considering the Peccei-Quinn charge reduction of black hole through the interaction between black hole and the string or wormhole.

22 pages, version published in JHEP

References in corpus (39)

• String Axiverse
• Axions In String Theory
• The String Landscape, Black Holes and Gravity as the Weakest Force
• On the Geometry of the String Landscape and the Swampland
• Systematics of Moduli Stabilisation in Calabi-Yau Flux Compactifications
• The Swampland: Introduction and Review
• Black Holes and Large N Species Solution to the Hierarchy Problem
• The QCD Axion and Moduli Stabilisation
• Building a Better Racetrack
• Lectures on the Swampland Program in String Compactifications
• Black Hole Bound on the Number of Species and Quantum Gravity at LHC
• Extranatural Inflation
• Transplanckian axions !?
• Recent Progress in the Physics of Axions and Axion-Like Particles
• The Weak Gravity Conjecture: A Review
• Strings at the Intermediate Scale, or is the Fermi Scale Dual to the Planck Scale?
• The Weak Gravity Conjecture and Emergence from an Ultraviolet Cutoff
• Euclidean wormholes, baby universes, and their impact on particle physics and cosmology
• Large-N bounds on, and compositeness limit of, gauge and gravitational interactions
• On the Possibility of Large Axion Moduli Spaces
• Constraints on Axion Inflation from the Weak Gravity Conjecture
• Festina Lente: EFT Constraints from Charged Black Hole Evaporation in de Sitter
• On Axionic Field Ranges, Loopholes and the Weak Gravity Conjecture
• A QCD Axion from Higher Dimensional Gauge Field
• Evaporation of Microscopic Black Holes in String Theory and the Bound on Species
• Black Hole Quantum Mechanics in the Presence of Species
• Constraining Neutrino Masses, the Cosmological Constant and BSM Physics from the Weak Gravity Conjecture
• The Emergence Proposal in Quantum Gravity and the Species Scale
• IR/UV Mixing, Towers of Species and Swampland Conjectures
• Can Gravitational Instantons Really Constrain Axion Inflation?
• A note on Gauge Theories Coupled to Gravity
• Weak Gravity Conjecture, Multiple Point Principle and the Standard Model Landscape
• The Weak Gravity Conjecture and the Axionic Black Hole Paradox
• A Chern-Simons Pandemic
• String theoretic QCD axions in the light of PLANCK and BICEP2
• Minimal Black Holes and Species Thermodynamics
• Axion Mass from Magnetic Monopole Loops
• Graviton propagator, renormalization scale and black-hole like states
• (In)stability of de Sitter vacuum in light of distance conjecture and emergence proposal

Cited by in corpus (4)

• EFT & Species Scale: Friends or foes?
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Swampland: The Cosmologist's Handbook to the string-theoretical Swampland Programme
• Bounds on complex structure moduli values for perturbative control
• Species scale associated with Weinberg operator and bound on Majorana neutrino mass