TCC in the interior of moduli space and its implications for the string landscape and cosmology

Alek Bedroya, Qianshu Lu, Paul J. Steinhardt

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

We consider the classical Friedmann-Robertson-Walker solutions that describe a universe undergoing a transition from an accelerating expansion phase in the past to an eternal decelerating expansion phase in the future, driven by a scalar field evolving in a potential energy landscape. We show that any solution for which the accelerating phase violates the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC), even in the interior of moduli space, never approaches the asymptotic vacuum with zero particles. Based on the assumption that the effective field theory must be valid for the vacuum on the asymptotic boundary, as motivated by holography and string theory, we argue that (multi-field) scalar potentials with such solutions are disallowed, thus strengthening the case for TCC. In particular, assuming the regularity of the future vacuum state in the string landscape, we derive results that imply a new set of highly-nonlinear constraints across the string landscape which in the absence of certain meta-stable vacua make realizing inflation impossible.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number7
JournalJournal of High Energy Physics
Volume2025
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2025

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Keywords

  • Cosmological models
  • Effective Field Theories
  • Models of Quantum Gravity
  • Superstring Vacua

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