Gravitino Swampland Conjecture

Open Access

Gravitino Swampland Conjecture

Edward W. Kolb, Andrew J. Long, and Evan McDonough

Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 131603 – Published 24 September 2021

Abstract

We extend the swampland from effective field theories (EFTs) inconsistent with quantum gravity to EFTs inconsistent with quantum supergravity. This enlarges the swampland to include EFTs that become inconsistent when the gravitino is quantized. We propose the “gravitino swampland conjecture”: the gravitino sound speed must be nonvanishing in all EFTs that are low-energy limits of quantum supergravity. This seemingly simple statement has important consequences for both theories and observations. The conjecture is consistent with and supported by the Kachru-Kallosh-Linde-Trivedi and large volume scenarios for moduli stabilization in string theory.

Received 26 March 2021
Revised 28 May 2021
Accepted 13 August 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.131603

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP³.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Inflation Particle production Quantum fields in curved spacetime Quantum gravity Supergravity

Gravitation, Cosmology & AstrophysicsParticles & Fields

Authors & Affiliations

Edward W. Kolb ¹, Andrew J. Long ², and Evan McDonough ^1,3

¹Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA
²Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA
³Department of Physics, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MB R3B 2E9, Canada