Effective potential of scalar-tensor gravity with quartic self-interaction of scalar field

One-loop effective potential of scalar-tensor gravity with a quartic scalar field self-interaction is evaluated up to first post-Minkowskian order. The potential develops an instability in the strong field regime which is expected from an effective theory. Depending on model parameters the instability region can be exponentially far in a strong field region. Possible applications of the model for inflationary scenarios are highlighted. It is shown that the model can enter the slow-roll regime with a certain set of parameters.

Large power spectrum and primordial black holes in the effective theory of inflation

We study the generation of a large power spectrum, necessary for primordial black hole formation, within the effective theory of single-field inflation. The mechanisms we consider include a transition into a ghost-inflation-like phase and scenarios where an exponentially growing mode is temporarily turned on. In the cases we discuss, the enhancement in the power spectrum results from either a swift change in some effective coupling or a modification of the dispersion relation for the perturbations, while the background evolution remains unchanged and approximately de Sitter throughout inflation. The robustness of the results is guaranteed thanks to a weakly broken galileon symmetry, which protects the effective couplings against large quantum corrections. We discuss how the enhancement of the power spectrum is related to the energy scale of the operators with weakly broken galileon invariance, and study the limits imposed by strong coupling and the validity of the perturbative expansion.

Planckian physics comes into play at Planckian distance from horizon

In the background of a gravitational collapse, we compute the transition amplitudes for the creation of particles for distant observers due to higher-derivative interactions in addition to Hawking radiation. The amplitudes grow exponentially with time and become of order 1 when the collapsing matter is about a Planck length outside the horizon. As a result, the effective theory breaks down at the scrambling time, invalidating its prediction of Hawking radiation. Planckian physics comes into play to decide the fate of black-hole evaporation.

An effective matrix model for dynamical end of the world branes in Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity

We study Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity with dynamical end of the world branes in asymptotically nearly AdS2 spacetimes. We quantize this theory in Lorentz signature, and compute the Euclidean path integral summing over topologies including dynamical branes. The latter will be seen to exactly match with a modification of the SSS matrix model. The resolution of UV divergences in the gravitational instantons involving the branes will lead us to understand the matrix model interpretation of the Wilsonian effective theory perspective on the gravitational theory. We complete this modified SSS matrix model nonperturbatively by extending the integration contour of eigenvalues into the complex plane. Furthermore, we give a new interpretation of other phases in such matrix models. We derive an effective W(Φ) dilaton gravity, which exhibits similar physics semiclassically. In the limit of a large number of flavors of branes, the effective extremal entropy S0,eff has the form of counting the states of these branes.

Physics of warped dimensions and continuous spectra

We study some features of a warped five-dimensional model that solves the hierarchy problem and exhibits a continuum of Kaluza-Klein (KK) modes with a mass gap at the TeV scale. We compute the propagators and spectral functions for massless bulk gauge bosons, and study how the continuum can be reached as the limit of a set of models with discrete spectrum. Finally, we study the low energy effective theory and provide explicit results for the Wilson coefficients.

Rotating 5D black holes: Interactions and deformations near extremality

We study a two-dimensional theory of gravity coupled to matter that is relevant to describe holographic properties of black holes with two equal angular momenta in five dimensions (with or without cosmological constant). We focus on the near-horizon geometry of the near-extremal black hole, where the effective theory reduces to Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity coupled to a massive scalar field. We compute the corrections to correlation functions due to cubic interactions present in this theory. A novel feature is that these corrections do not have a definite sign: for AdS_55 black holes the sign depends on the mass of the extremal solution. We discuss possible interpretations of these corrections from a gravitational and holographic perspective. We also quantify the imprint of the JT sector on the UV region, i.e. how these degrees of freedom, characteristic for the near-horizon region, influence the asymptotically far region of the black hole. This gives an interesting insight on how to interpret the IR modes in the context of their UV completion, which depends on the environment that contains the black hole.

Threshold resummation of new partonic channels at next-to-leading power

Collider observables involving heavy particles are subject to large logarithmic terms near threshold, which must be summed to all orders in perturbation theory to obtain sensible results. Relatively recently, this resummation has been extended to next-to-leading power in the threshold variable, using a variety of approaches. In this paper, we consider partonic channels that turn on only at next-to-leading power, and show that it is possible to resum leading logarithms using well-established diagrammatic techniques in Quantum Chromodynamics. We first consider deep inelastic scattering, where we reproduce the results of a recent study using an effective theory approach. Next, we consider the quark-gluon channel in both Drell-Yan and Higgs boson production, showing that an explicit all-order form for the leading logarithmic partonic cross section can be obtained. Our results agree with previous conjectures based on fixed-order results.

Squashed black holes at large D

Using the large D effective theory approach, we construct a static solution of non-extremal and squashed black holes with/without an electric charge, which describes a spherical black hole in a Kaluza-Klein spacetime with a compactified dimension. The asymptotic background with a compactified dimension and near-horizon geometry are analytically solved by the 1/D expansion. Particularly, our work demonstrates that the large D limit can be applied to solve the non-trivial background with a compactified direction, which leads to a first-order flow equation. Moreover, we show that the extremal limit consistently reproduces the known extremal result.

de Sitter vacua from ten dimensions

We analyze the de Sitter construction of [1] using ten-dimensional supergravity, finding exact agreement with the four-dimensional effective theory. Starting from the fermionic couplings in the D7-brane action, we derive the ten-dimensional stress-energy due to gaugino condensation on D7-branes. We demonstrate that upon including this stress-energy, as well as that due to anti-D3-branes, the ten-dimensional equations of motion require the four-dimensional curvature to take precisely the value determined by the four-dimensional effective theory of [1].

Sharpening the boundaries between flux landscape and swampland by tadpole charge

We investigate the vacuum structure of four-dimensional effective theory arising from Type IIB flux compactifications on a mirror of the rigid Calabi-Yau threefold, corresponding to a T-dual of the DeWolfe-Giryavets-Kachru-Taylor model in Type IIA flux compactifications. By analyzing the vacuum structure of this interesting corner of string landscape, it turns out that there exist perturbatively unstable de Sitter (dS) vacua in addition to supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric anti-de Sitter vacua. On the other hand, the stable dS vacua appearing in the low-energy effective action violate the tadpole cancellation condition, indicating a strong correlation between the existence of dS vacua and the flux-induced D3-brane charge (tadpole charge). We also find analytically that the tadpole charge constrained by the tadpole cancellation condition emerges in the scalar potential in a nontrivial way. Thus, the tadpole charge would restrict the existence of stable dS vacua, and this fact underlies the statement of the dS conjecture. Furthermore, our analytical and numerical results exhibit that distributions of $$ \mathcal{O}(1) $$ O 1 parameters in expressions of several swampland conjectures peak at specific values.