CMSA Swampland: String theory scalar potentials and their critical points

SEMINARS

Speaker:

David Andriot - LAPTH Annecy

Positive scalar potentials in string effective theories could provide an origin to Dark Energy, responsible for the accelerated expansion of our universe today or during inflation. It is thus crucial to characterise these scalar potentials, namely their slope, their critical points (de Sitter solutions) and the associated stability, as also advocated by the Swampland Program. We will present such characterisations. Going further, we will also discuss negative scalar potentials, and make related observations on anti-de Sitter solutions, in particular on a new mass bound, as well as comments on scale separation.