2025/01/06 by Edoardo Anastasi, Roberta Angius, Anastasi, Edoardo +6 · 1 citation
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Algebraic and Geometric Analysis #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Quantum Mechanics and Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2501.03310
openalex publication_date 2025/01/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We perform a systematic study of the applicability of swampland constraints to theories of localized gravity. We find that these gravity theories can violate swampland constraints, but can be reconciled with them when coupled to a higher-dimensional gravity theory. They realize what we call relative quantum gravity: to become consistent at the quantum level, these gravity theories must be defined as relative to a host higher-dimensional gravity theory. We show that these theories can admit global symmetries, even anomalous ones; they can violate the cobordism, completeness, weak gravity, and distance conjectures; they may admit stable non-supersymmetric AdS vacua, or dS vacua. All swampland constraints are however satisfied when these gravity theories are regarded as relative and completed by coupling them to a higher-dimensional one. We discuss these properties in d-dimensional gravity theories localized on Karch-Randall End of the World (ETW) boundaries of AdSd+1 spacetime. For AdSd ETW branes we use the formalism of double holography to describe the appearance of the species scale and the emergence of gauge dynamics from the quantum backreaction of CFTd modes. We also study microscopically the swampland constraints in localized gravity in explicit string theory models. Concretely, we exploit the 10d supergravity solutions describing AdS4 ETW branes for AdS5\timesS5, holographically dual to semi-infinite D3-branes ending on NS5- and D5-brane configurations, realizing 4d N=4 SU(N) on half-space coupled to a 3d Gaiotto-Witten superconformal boundary CFT3.