The Quantum Gravity Imprint: New Guiding Principles at Low Energies

ERC (European Research Council)HORIZON-ERCID: 101042568
EC Contribution
€13,826
Consortium Size
2 orgs
Start Year
2022
Summary

What are the constraints that a low energy Effective Field Theory must satisfy to be consistent with a Quantum Gravity description at higher energies? Can we determine these constraints in a precise way and use them as new guiding principles to progress in High Energy Physics? Recently, novel quantum gravity criteria have been proposed that imply non-trivial constraints on models of Particle Physics and Cosmology and can provide the missing piece to solve the long-standing naturalness issues observed in our universe. However, none of these so-called Swampland constraints have been completely proven yet; and often, they even lack a precise formulation. The goal of my proposal is to determine the constraints that Quantum Gravity imposes at low energies by uncovering the fundamental principles underlying the Swampland conjectures and looking for new universal constraints in the context of string theory. To achieve this goal, I propose a novel approach based on cutting-edge mathematical techniques of algebraic geometry and the topological cobordism groups that extend the notion of symmetry. Each conjecture will be subject to scrutiny such that it gets either disproven or promoted to a sharp statement in the realm of well-established string compactifications. Specific goals include an in-depth analysis of the mechanisms by which string theory avoids new classes of generalised global symmetries, a complete classification of the field spectra emerging at the large field limits of flat space string compactifications, developing new methods to study the scalar potential at the large field limits and determining whether supersymmetry is a necessary condition to ensure vacuum stability. These new quantum gravity constraints will trigger a revolution in our understanding of the Quantum Gravity imprint at low energies, addressing questions about axions, neutrino masses, inflation, hierarchy problems, weakly coupled charged matter and the accelerated expansion of the universe.

Consortium (2)

Project Results (11)

Source: CORDIS, the EU research results database.

Publications (11)
Cornering relative symmetry theories
Phys.Rev.D· 2025DOI
Mirjam Cvetič, Ron Donagi, Jonathan J. Heckman, Max Hübner, Ethan Torres
Taxonomy of infinite distance limits
Journal of High Energy Physics· 2025DOI
Muldrow Etheredge, Ben Heidenreich, Tom Rudelius, Ignacio Ruiz, Irene Valenzuela
Cosmology of light towers and swampland constraints
JHEP· 2024DOI
Gonzalo F. Casas, Ignacio Ruiz
Fate of stringy noninvertible symmetries
Physical Review D· 2024DOI
Jonathan J. Heckman, Jacob McNamara, Miguel Montero, Adar Sharon, Cumrun Vafa, and Irene Valenzuela
Non-supersymmetric heterotic strings on a circle
JHEP· 2024DOI
Bernardo Fraiman, Mariana Graña, Héctor Parra De Freitas, Savdeep Sethi
On measuring distances in the quantum gravity landscape
Journal of High Energy Physics· 2024DOI
Amineh Mohseni, Miguel Montero, Cumrun Vafa, Irene Valenzuela
Stringy evidence for a universal pattern at infinite distance
Journal of High Energy Physics· 2024DOI
Alberto Castellano, Ignacio Ruiz, Irene Valenzuela
Treelike structure of symmetry topological field theories and multisector QFTs
Physical Review D· 2024DOI
Florent Baume; Jonathan J. Heckman; Max Hübner; Ethan Torres; Andrew P. Turner; Xingyang Yu
Universal Pattern in Quantum Gravity at Infinite Distance
Physical Review Letters· 2024DOI
Alberto Castellano, Ignacio Ruiz, Irene Valenzuela
Running decompactification, sliding towers, and the distance conjecture
Journal of High Energy Physics· 2023DOI
Muldrow Etheredge, Ben Heidenreich, Jacob McNamara, Tom Rudelius, Ignacio Ruiz, Irene Valenzuela
Tadpoles and gauge symmetries
Journal of High Energy Physics· 2023DOI
Andreas P. Braun, Bernardo Fraiman, Mariana Graña, Severin Lüst, Héctor Parra De Freitas