2018/10/31 by Gia Dvali, Cesar Gomez, Sebastian Zell · 102 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Conjecture #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #De Sitter space #De Sitter universe #Entropy (arrow of time) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Quantum #Quantum gravity #String theory #Upper and lower bounds #Vacuum energy #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/prop.201800094
published in Fortschritte der Physik 67(1-2) (Wiley) · 4 pages, matches published version; v2: added references
openalex created_date 2018/11/02 · openalex publication_date 2018/12/18 · arxiv created 2019/07/31 · arxiv updated 2019/08/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract Quantum consistency suggests that any de Sitter patch that lasts a number of Hubble times that exceeds its Gibbons‐Hawking entropy divided by the number of light particle species suffers an effect of quantum breaking . Inclusion of other interactions makes the quantum break‐time shorter. The requirement that this must not happen puts severe constraints on scalar potentials, essentially suppressing the self‐reproduction regimes. In particular, it eliminates both local and global minima with positive energy densities and imposes a general upper bound on the number of e‐foldings in any given Hubble patch. Consequently, maxima and other tachyonic directions must be curved stronger than the corresponding Hubble parameter. We show that the key relations of the recently‐proposed de Sitter swampland conjecture follow from the de Sitter quantum breaking bound. We give a general derivation and also illustrate this on a concrete example of D ‐brane inflation. We can say that string theory as a consistent theory of quantum gravity nullifies a positive vacuum energy in self‐defense against quantum breaking.