As on arXiv
Abstract
The Swampland Distance Conjecture postulates the emergence of an infinite tower of massless states when approaching infinite-distance points in moduli space. However, most string backgrounds are supported by fluxes, and therefore depart from the purely geometric paradigm. This fact requires an extension of the Swampland conjectures to scalar field spaces with non-trivial potentials, rather than just moduli spaces. To address this task, we utilise geometric flows, in particular generalised Ricci flow, to probe the associated scalar field spaces. Considering internal spaces supported by three-form fluxes, we first show that the distance defined in terms of the Perelman entropy functional needs to be refined in order to encompass fluxes. Doing so, we extend the Ricci Flow Conjecture to include Kalb-Ramond flux besides the metric and the dilaton field. This allows us to probe infinite-distance points within these scalar field spaces in a purely geometric way. We subsequently construct a geometric flow for internal manifolds supported by Ramond-Ramond fluxes and discuss its role in the Ricci Flow Conjecture. Our analysis suggests that in the presence of fluxes the Distance Conjecture might be better characterised in terms of a cost function on the space of metrics, rather than a genuine distance.
Comments: 41 pages
Its neighbourhood
Connected papers
The 8 papers on this site closest to this one, judged by the topics they share, the words and phrases in their titles and abstracts, and their authors. They are not its citations, but a map of the work around it. Papers here go back to 2021, plus the canon.
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Geometric flows and the Swampland
Topics Perelman entropy, Physics · Shared terms “Swampland”, “geometric flows”, “scalar field”
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Cobordism, Singularities and the Ricci Flow Conjecture
Topics Ricci flow · Same author Dieter Lust · Shared terms “Flow Conjecture”, “Distance Conjecture”, “Swampland Distance”
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Topics Perelman entropy, Physics · Shared terms “entropy functional”, “string theory”
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Topics Physics · Shared terms “scalar field”, “Distance Conjecture”, “geometric flows”
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Topics Perelman entropy, Physics · Shared terms “geometric flows”, “string theory”, “paradigm”
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Topics Perelman entropy, Generalized & G₂ flows · Shared terms “moduli space”
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Topics Perelman entropy, Physics · Shared terms “paradigm”
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Topics Generalized & G₂ flows, Physics · Shared terms “string theory”
Read around it
Background reading
The guides for the topics of this paper: what each idea is, why it matters, and the papers to read first.
In the guidebook
- 12C.9After Perelman
Singular flows, the Smale conjecture, and Bamler’s theory.
- 6A.12Entropy, Information and Diffusion
Entropy along the heat flow, the log-Sobolev inequality and Li–Yau: the ancestors of Perelman’s entropy.
- 6A.13Self-Similar Variables and Monotonicity
Changing variables so that self-similar solutions stand still: convergence to the Gaussian, Giga–Kohn blow-up, Gaussian-weighted monotonicity formulas, frequency functions, and the blow-up logic of Huisken, Struwe and Perelman.