Exploring the Weak Gravity Conjecture

Speaker: Matthew Reece

The Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC), in its original form, says that given an abelian gauge theory there should be at least one charged particle whose charge is bigger than its mass in Planck units. This has surprisingly powerful implications for the possibility of large-field inflation. In this talk I will discuss some of the arguments linking the conjecture to cosmology, and present some new evidence that strong versions of the conjecture are likely to be true.