Emergent strings at infinite distance with broken supersymmetry

Abstract

We investigate the infinite-distance properties of families of unstable flux vacua in string theory with broken supersymmetry. To this end, we employ a generalized notion of distance in the moduli space and we build a holographic description for the non-perturbative regime of the tunneling cascade in terms of a renormalization group flow. In one limit we recover an exponentially light tower of Kaluza-Klein states, while in the opposite limit we find a tower of higher-spin excitations of D1-branes, realizing the emergent string proposal. In particular, the holographic description includes a free sector, whose emergent superconformal symmetry resonates with supersymmetric stability, the CFT distance conjecture and S-duality. We compute the anomalous dimensions of scalar vertex operators and single-trace higher-spin currents, finding an exponential suppression with the distance which is not generic from the renormalization group perspective, but appears specific to our settings.

Constraints on early dark energy from the axion weak gravity conjecture

“…Like the Distance Conjecture, it is not clear that the Emergent String Conjecture applies in the non-supersymmetric context to scalar fields with potentials. Preliminary evidence suggests that this may be true [21][22][23][24], but more research is needed.…”

Supersymmetry breaking, brane dynamics and the swampland

“…All in all, the results that we have presented in this contribution indicate that brane dynamics can be robust probe for microscopic physics even in the absence of (linear) supersymmetry, at least to some extent. Indeed, deeper connections with holography and swampland conjectures have been explored recently [16,50] from this perspective, complementing the bottom-up considerations of [69,70] (see also [48,49]).…”

“…Nevertheless, not all hope is lost for realistic cosmological models in these settings, since dS braneworlds arise spontaneously from brane nucleation. As a final comment, let us mention that in these settings the emergent string scenario of [58,59] also arises via a novel mechanism [16].…”

“…In this paper we review the connection between brane interactions, vacuum stability and the weak gravity conjecture (WGC) discussed in [15] (see also [16]), in order to shed light on the nature and consistency of instabilities induced by dynamical tadpoles. Concretely, we present the computation of static interaction potentials between stacks of parallel branes of various charges and dimensions.…”

Geometric Flow of Bubbles

“…As has been commented on in 2.4.1, only the second ones are tied to the specificities of superstrings, since they emerge from closed strings winding around the extra dimension and do not figure when compactifying traditional quantum field theories. The swampland distance conjecture has been widely explored and extended [224,[277][278][279][280][281][282][283][284], fruitfully applied in the context of cosmology [285][286][287][288] and related to either the restoration of global symmetries, which should be absent from any consistent theory of quantum gravity [262,263,[289][290][291][292][293][294][295][296], or the emergence of a critical string [297][298][299]. In a series of works [159,202,203,217,242,249,[300][301][302][303], some of which will constitute the backbone of part II, multiple generalisations of the conjecture to the space-time metric itself were put forward.…”