The Absolute Swampland

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current understanding of three key swampland conjectures across string theory and asymptotic safety, aiming to clarify their universality or framework-specific nature in quantum gravity.

Contribution

It compares different approaches to swampland conjectures, highlighting future research directions to determine their absolute or relative status in quantum gravity.

Findings

Summarizes known swampland conjectures in string theory and asymptotic safety.

Identifies potential universality or framework-specificity of these conjectures.

Suggests future research to clarify the scope of swampland criteria.

Abstract

The ``Swampland Program'' aims to discriminate consistent-looking effective field theories that do not admit a UV completion in quantum gravity from those that do. While most often developed under the umbrella of string theory, several swampland criteria have been explored also in other contexts, especially asymptotically safe gravity. A comparison between different approaches can help to clarify the dependence of low-energy constraints on UV physics and thereby shed light on the universality of quantum gravity itself. In this short review we summarise what is known about three important swampland conjectures in string theory and in asymptotic safety. We point out future lines of research that can help to understand to what extent swampland conjectures are absolute, i.e. hold in quantum gravity in general, or relative, i.e. belong only to a specific UV framework.