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Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology)
Phenomenological and Quantum Gravity constraints from Charged Black Hole Evaporation in de Sitter Space
Date: Friday, February 5th
Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Place: For zoom link, sign up at:
Speaker: Gerben Venken, Heidelberg University
Abstract: In this talk, I will discuss the decay of charged black holes in de Sitter space. We will establish how black hole mass and charge change over time due to both Hawking radiation and Schwinger pair production as a function of the masses and charges of the elementary particles in the theory. By demanding that black holes decay 'sensibly', one can constrain the spectrum of allowed particles in a theory in an interesting way. This fits into the larger picture of the Swampland program of constraining effective field theories by demanding they can be completed into consistent quantum gravity theories. We will find a lower bound on the mass of charged particles by demanding that large charged black holes evaporate back to empty de Sitter space, in accordance with the thermal picture of the de Sitter static patch. This bound is satisfied by the charged spectrum of the Standard Model. This bound has phenomenological implications for the cosmological hierarchy problem and inflation. The bound has a nice interplay with other constraints obtained in the swampland program. The bound can be applied to argue against the consistency of certain de Sitter supergravity models. There has been much discussion about the consistency of de Sitter vacua in string theory and quantum gravity. Interestingly, proposed string theory constructions of de Sitter vacua involving uplifting warped throats such as KKLT and LVS seem at present to satisfy both our bound and the weak gravity conjecture.
Host: Lars Aalsma
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