(17.12.) Global symmetries, cobordisms, and string universality NOTE SPECIAL TIME
Miguel Montero (Harvard)
17.12.2020 at 17:15
Perhaps the oldest Swampland conjecture in the book is the absence of global symmetries. I will describe the consequences of applying this conjecture to a particular class of symmetries, Chern-Weil symmetries, that are ubiquitous in string compactifications and which arise from powers of fieldstrenghts. Secondly, I will describe how a variant of the no global symmetries conjecture, the cobordism conjecture, can be used to place sharp constraints on the periodicity of the rank of higher-dimensional N=1 supersymmetric theories. The resulting constraint is so strong that in some cases it allows one to achieve string universality: The observed values of the rank in string compactifications precisely match those allowed by Swampland constraints.
Arnold Sommerfeld Center
Theresienstrasse 37
Room 348
via ZOOM