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Primordial Gravitational Waves and the Swampland
Author(s) -
Dias Mafalda,
Frazer Jonathan,
Retolaza Ander,
Westphal Alexander
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
fortschritte der physik
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.469
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1521-3978
pISSN - 0015-8208
DOI - 10.1002/prop.201800063
Subject(s) - gravitational wave , inflation (cosmology) , physics , theoretical physics , amplitude , scalar (mathematics) , gravitation , de sitter universe , quantum gravity , field (mathematics) , effective field theory , mathematical physics , classical mechanics , quantum , particle physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , universe , geometry , pure mathematics
Abstract The swampland conjectures seek to distinguish effective field theories which can be consistently embedded in a theory of quantum gravity from those which can not (and are hence referred to as being in the swampland). We consider two such conjectures, known as the Swampland Distance and de Sitter Conjectures, showing that taken together they place bounds on the amplitude of primordial gravitational waves generated during single field slow‐roll inflation. The bounds depend on two parameters which for reasonable estimates restrict the tensor‐to‐scalar ratio to be within reach of future surveys.