Light EFT Strings and Asymptotic Accelerated Expansion

Abstract

We study the interplay among towers of particles, EFT strings, and EFT membranes near perturbative infinite-distance limits of four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=1$ theories. We show that the scaling vectors of EFT membranes lie in the lattice generated by those of the EFT strings, as previously found for particle towers, and determine their specific relative scaling in F-theory and Type IIA Calabi-Yau compactifications. We then leverage these objects to assess the viability of asymptotic accelerated expansion in flux compactifications. While our bottom-up analysis does not yield a general obstruction, we rule out two candidate accelerating trajectories in F-theory because an EFT string becomes lighter than the Hubble scale, invalidating the four-dimensional EFT. This closes the loophole found in arXiv:2209.11821. We also study how recent results on quantum obstructions to $\mathcal{N}=1$ infinite-distance limits may provide a concrete resolution by changing the asymptotic form of the Kähler potential.

arXiv comment43 pages, 2 appendices, 12 figures