On the correspondence between black holes, domain walls and fluxes

TL;DR

This paper explores the unified description of black holes, domain walls, and fluxes in type IIA supergravity, applying this to support swampland conjectures and revealing new links between black hole properties and string theory constraints.

Contribution

It extends the correspondence between black holes, domain walls, and fluxes, and uses this to motivate swampland conjectures from black hole characteristics.

Findings

Swampland conjectures can be supported by black hole entropy properties.

An extended correspondence includes geometric fluxes and Kaluza-Klein monopoles.

Anti-de Sitter distance conjecture relates to black hole charge and gauge couplings.

Abstract

We revisit and extend the correspondence between black holes, domain walls and fluxes in type IIA compactifications. We argue that these three systems can be described by the same supergravity effective action, modulo proper identifications and adjustments. Then, we apply the correspondence to investigate swampland conjectures on de Sitter and anti-de Sitter vacua, as well as on the black hole entropy. We show that, in certain cases, swampland conjectures can be motivated from properties of black hole solutions, such as positiveness of the entropy. This provides a bottom-up rationale which is complementary to the usual tests in string theory. When asking for an agreement between the anti-de Sitter and the black hole entropy distance conjectures, we are led to an extension of the correspondence which includes geometric fluxes and the associated Kaluza-Klein monopoles domain walls. Finally, we point out that the anti-de Sitter distance conjecture is naturally implemented in certain asymptotically anti-de Sitter black holes as a consequence of a constraint involving black hole charges and supergravity gauge couplings.