Amplitudes’ Positivity, Weak Gravity Conjecture, and Modified Gravity

by Matthew Lewandowski (CEA Saclay)

Wednesday 19 Jun 2019, 11:30 → 13:30 Europe/Zurich

4/2-011 - TH common room (CERN)

We derive new positivity bounds for scattering amplitudes in theories with a massless graviton in the spectrum in four spacetime dimensions, of relevance for the weak gravity conjecture and modified gravity theories.  The bounds imply that extremal black holes are self-repulsive, M/|Q| < 1 in suitable units, and that they are unstable to decay to smaller extremal black holes, providing an S-matrix proof of the weak gravity conjecture. We also present other applications of our bounds to the effective field theory of axions, P(X) theories, weakly broken galileons, and curved spacetimes.