IAS Program on Particle Theory - de Sitter Vacua in the Swampland Era

Abstract

A series of conjectures have been recently proposed to distinguish effective field theories that can be consistently coupled to quantum gravity from those which cannot. The latter do not arise as low energy limits of string compactifications and are said to live in the Swampland. The most recent of the swampland conjectures argues that theories of quantum gravity with de Sitter (dS) minima are inconsistent. If correct, it would imply that well known dS constructions in string theory (e.g. the KKLT (Kachru, Kallosh, Linde and Trivedi, 2003) and the Large Volume Scenarios) are secretly pathological. In this talk, the speaker will review some motivations behind the no-dS swampland conjecture and discuss recent insights on the consistency of the KKLT scenario.

About the speaker

Dr. Pablo Soler Gomis received his MSc and PhD from Autonomous University of Madrid in 2009 and 2012 respectively. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study during 2012-2014 and University of Wisconsin-Madison during 2014-2016. He is currently a Research Associate at Institute for Theoretical Physics of Heidelberg University and a Referee for the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP).  

Dr. Soler Gomis’ research focuses on string theory, its formal aspects and its potential applications to particle physics.

About the program

For more information, please refer to the program website at http://iasprogram.ust.hk/particle_theory.