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Swampland Distance Conjecture, Inflation and $\alpha$-attractors

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arxiv 1812.07558 v2 pith:FGU2TQIH submitted 2018-12-18 hep-th astro-ph.COhep-ph

classification hep-thastro-ph.COhep-ph
keywords inflationalphadistancefieldinfiniteattractorsconjecturearound
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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abstract

The Swampland Distance Conjecture (SDC) constraints the dynamics emerging at infinite distances in field space of any effective field theory consistent with quantum gravity. It provides a relation between the cut-off in energies and the field range which, as we show, in the context of inflation it yields a universal upper bound on the inflaton excursion in terms of the tensor-to-scalar ratio, measured at typical CMB scales. In this note, we investigate the interplay between the SDC and the emergent inflationary physics around infinite distances singularities in string theory, with a special look at its significance for the $\alpha$-attractor scenario of inflation. We show that the conjecture itself suggests that inflation may arise as an infinite distance phenomenon with the asymptotic kinetic structure typical of $\alpha$-attractors. Furthermore, we argue that a proper string realisation of these cosmological models in Calabi-Yau manifolds should occur around infinite field distance singularities. However, such constructions typically imply that inflation should not take place in the limit where the inflaton kinetic term develops a pole but rather in the opposite regime. Finally, we study the constraints that the SDC poses on $\alpha$-attractors and show that they still leave considerable room for compatibility with observations.

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Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. The Boundary of Symmetric Moduli Spaces and the Swampland Distance Conjecture

    hep-th 2025-08 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    For locally symmetric moduli spaces satisfying a compactifiability constraint, every infinite-distance limit produces an exponentially light tower of states, with decay rates forming the convex hull of the weights of ...

  2. Inflationary Particle Production and the Swampland

    hep-th 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Tower-induced corrections to inflationary observables scale as (H/Λsp)^{2+p} and are negligible whenever H≪Λsp.

  3. Global Asymptotics, the Swampland Conjectures, and Preheating of String Moduli

    hep-th 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Global asymptotic shape, not just local curvature, controls tachyonic self-resonant preheating of string moduli, and stochastic light-tower effects mostly smear existing resonance bands.

  4. Corrections to inflationary models induced by non-minimal coupling between scalar field and curvature

    gr-qc 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Power-law non-minimal coupling F=(H/λ)^{2n} deforms inflationary potentials, shifts r and n_S while preserving n_T=-r/8 and GR-like reheating, enabling r(1-n_S) classification of models against Planck/ACT data.

  5. One-loop corrections to the E-type $\alpha$-attractor models of inflation and primordial black hole production

    gr-qc 2025-02 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    For E-type alpha-attractor inflation models tuned to produce asteroid-mass primordial black holes, the one-loop correction from cubic interactions is only a few percent of the tree-level power spectrum.

  6. Pure Natural Inflation Passes the ACT

    astro-ph.CO 2026-03 unverdicted novelty 4.0 of 10

    Pure natural inflation remains viable against latest ACT+DESI constraints, with a non-trivial fraction of parameter space allowed under standard reheating scenarios.

  7. The Wave Function of the Universe and Inflation

    gr-qc 2025-10 reject novelty 3.0 of 10

    Rearranging the Wheeler-DeWitt equation defines the inflaton potential in terms of an arbitrary wave-function phase and amplitude; nothing constrains that wave function, so the potential is relabeled rather than deriv...

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