Gauge symmetries in Quantum Gravity and String Theory

September 15, 2016
12:00pm to 2:00pm

IFT Seminar Room/Red Room

Specialist level
Speaker: 
Miguel Montero Muñoz
Institution: 
IFT
Location&Place: 

IFT Seminar Room/Red Room

Abstract: 

This thesis explores the spectrum of states charged under global and gauge symmetries in String Theory, and the constraints that they pose on specific phenomenological models. On one hand, we use supercritical theories (those with more than 10 or 26 dimensions) to embed discrete gauge symmetries of the critical theory into continuous ones in a supercritical extension, and use this description to construct the associated charged objects.

We also discuss the constraints on large field inflation models coming from gravitational instantons in the effective field theory. These instantons are related to and motivated by the Weak Gravity Conjecture, which demands the existence of light charged objects in any gauge theory consistently coupled to quantum gravity. We constrain both single and multiple axion models of inflation.

Finally, we solve some issues of the relaxion proposal as a solution to the hierarchy problem by embedding it in an axion monodromy setup. We also provide the first steps towards an embedding of the relaxion proposal in D-brane models.