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The Veneziano amplitude has recently been uniquely bootstrapped from crossing symmetry, faster than power-law falloff at high energies, and a property dubbed level truncation. In this paper we apply this bootstrap approach to fully permutation invariant amplitudes, deriving new deformations of the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude for graviton scattering in string theory. Superpolynomially soft Regge behavior yields the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude as the unique solution, and we find the string spectrum as an output rather than an input of the bootstrap. While the remaining variations exhibit the same Regge scaling as pure gravity, in the tensionless limit they reproduce remarkable extremal amplitudes that have appeared in bottom-up studies of positivity., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

We show that the Veneziano amplitude of string theory is the unique solution to an analytically solvable bootstrap problem. Uniqueness follows from two assumptions: faster than power-law falloff in high-energy scattering and the existence of some infinite sequence in momentum transfer at which higher-spin exchanges cancel. The string amplitude$\unicode{x2013}$including the mass spectrum$\unicode{x2013}$is an output of this bootstrap. If the amplitude merely vanishes at high energies, the solution is a three-parameter family containing the Veneziano, Coon, and hypergeometric amplitudes, and more., Comment: 5 pages (+ 2 pages supplementary), 1 figure

It was recently shown that (near-)extremal Kerr black holes are sensitive probes of small higher-derivative corrections to general relativity. In particular, these corrections produce diverging tidal forces on the horizon in the extremal limit. We show that adding a black hole charge makes this effect qualitatively stronger. Higher-derivative corrections to the Kerr-Newman solution produce tidal forces that scale inversely in the black hole temperature. We find that, unlike the Kerr case, for realistic values of the black hole charge large tidal forces can arise before quantum corrections due to the Schwarzian mode become important, so that the near-horizon behavior of the black hole is dictated by higher-derivative terms in the effective theory., Comment: 54 pages, 8 figures

We show that positivity of the imaginary part of forward elastic amplitudes for perturbative scattering is equivalent to consistency of the entanglement generated by the S-matrix, for states with arbitrary internal quantum numbers such as flavor. We also analyze "disentanglers," certain highly entangled initial states for which the action of the S-matrix is to decrease subsystem entanglement., Comment: 7 pages (+ 5 supplemental), 1 figure

Is string theory uniquely determined by self-consistency? Causality and unitarity seemingly permit a multitude of putative deformations, at least at the level of two-to-two scattering. Motivated by this question, we initiate a systematic exploration of the constraints on scattering from higher-point factorization, which imposes extraordinarily restrictive sum rules on the residues and spectra defined by a given amplitude. These bounds handily exclude several proposed deformations of the string: the simplest "bespoke" amplitudes with tunable masses and a family of modified string integrands from "binary geometry." While the string itself passes all tests, our formalism directly extracts the three-point amplitudes for the low-lying string modes without the aid of worldsheet vertex operators., Comment: 5 pages (+ 4 pages supplementary), 2 figures

Holographic screens are codimension-one hypersurfaces that extend the notion of apparent horizons to general (non-black hole) spacetimes and that display interesting thermodynamic properties. We show that if a spacetime contains a codimension-two, boundary-homologous, minimal extremal spacelike surface $X$ (known as an HRT surface in AdS/CFT), then any holographic screens are sequestered to the causal wedges of $X$. That is, any single connected component of a holographic screen can be located in at most one of the causal future, causal past, inner wedge, or outer wedge of $X$. We comment on how this result informs possible coarse grained entropic interpretations of generic holographic screens, as well as on connections to semiclassical objects such as quantum extremal surfaces., Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures; v2: Expanded introduction and fixed typos. Published version

In AdS/CFT, observables on the boundary are invariant under renormalization group (RG) flow in the bulk. In this paper, we study holographic entanglement entropy under bulk RG flow and find that it is indeed invariant. We focus on tree-level RG flow, where massive fields in a UV theory are integrated out to give the IR theory. We explicitly show that in several simple examples, holographic entanglement entropy calculated in the UV theory agrees with that calculated in the IR theory. Moreover, we give an argument for this agreement to hold for general tree-level RG flow. Along the way, we generalize the replica method of calculating holographic entanglement entropy to bulk theories that include matter fields with nonzero spin., Comment: 29 pages, 2 figures; v2: minor edits, added references, matches the published version

Dual resonance is one of the great miracles of string theory. At a fundamental level, it implies that the particles exchanged in different channels are subtly equivalent. Furthermore, it is inextricably linked to the property of exceptionally tame high-energy behavior. In this paper, we present explicit, closed-form expressions for a new class of dual resonant amplitudes describing an infinite tower of spins for an arbitrary mass spectrum. In particular, the input of our construction is a user-defined, fully customizable choice of masses. The resulting "bespoke" amplitudes are well behaved in the ultraviolet and analytic except at simple poles whose residues are polynomial in the momentum transfer, in accordance with locality. The absence of branch cuts can be seen using Newton's identities, but can also be made manifest by expressing the amplitudes as a simple dlog integral of the Veneziano amplitude that remaps the linear Regge trajectories of the string to a tunable spectrum. We identify open regions of parameter space that firmly deviate from string theory but nevertheless comport with partial wave unitarity. Last but not least, we generalize our construction to the scattering of any number of particles in terms of a dlog transform of the Koba-Nielsen worldsheet integral formula., Comment: 36 pages, 3 figures

We show that extremal Kerr black holes are sensitive probes of new physics. Stringy or quantum corrections to general relativity are expected to generate higher-curvature terms in the gravitational action. We show that in the presence of these terms, asymptotically flat extremal rotating black holes have curvature singularities on their horizon. Furthermore, near-extremal black holes can have large yet finite tidal forces for infalling observers. In addition, we consider five-dimensional extremal charged black holes and show that higher-curvature terms can have a large effect on the horizon geometry., Comment: 6 pages (+ 4 pages supplementary material), v2 matches published version, v3 contains an added note about parity-odd terms

We describe an analytic procedure whereby scattering amplitudes are bootstrapped directly from an input mass spectrum and a handful of physical constraints: crossing symmetry, boundedness at high energies, and finiteness of exchanged spins. For an integer spectrum, this procedure gives a first principles derivation of a new infinite parameter generalization of the Veneziano amplitude that is unitary while exhibiting dual resonance and consistent high-energy behavior. Lifting to a $q$-deformed integer spectrum, we derive the Coon amplitude and its analogous generalizations. Finally, we apply this logic to derive an infinite class of deformed Virasoro-Shapiro amplitudes., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure

We construct and study general static, spherically symmetric, magnetically charged solutions in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity in four dimensions. That is, taking Einstein gravity coupled to a ${\rm U}(1)$ gauge field and a massless dilaton$\unicode{x2014}$e.g., the action in the low-energy limit of string theory or Kaluza-Klein reduction$\unicode{x2014}$with arbitrary dilaton coupling, we build a three-parameter family of objects characterized by their mass, charge, and dilaton flux, generalizing the well known Garfinkle-Horowitz-Strominger black hole. We analyze the near-extremal and near-horizon behavior in detail, finding new warped geometries. In a particular limit, where the geometry reduces to the recently discovered customizable ${\rm AdS}_2 \times S^2$ of Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity, we compute the static s-wave linearized solutions and characterize the anabasis relating the horizon perturbations to their nonlinear completions within our generalized family of spacetimes., Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures

String theory offers an elegant and concrete realization of how to consistently couple states of arbitrarily high spin. But how unique is this construction? In this paper we derive a novel, multi-parameter family of four-point scattering amplitudes exhibiting i) polynomially bounded high-energy behavior and ii) exchange of an infinite tower of high-spin modes, albeit with a finite number of states at each resonance. These amplitudes take an infinite-product form and, depending on parameters, exhibit mass spectra that are either unbounded or bounded, thus corresponding to generalizations of the Veneziano and Coon amplitudes, respectively. For the bounded case, masses converge to an accumulation point, a peculiar feature seen in the Coon amplitude but more recently understood to arise naturally in string theory. Importantly, our amplitudes contain free parameters allowing for the customization of the slope and offset of the spin-dependence in the Regge trajectory. We compute all partial waves for this multi-parameter class of amplitudes and identify unitary regions of parameter space. For the unbounded case, we apply similar methods to derive new deformations of the Veneziano and Virasoro-Shapiro amplitudes., Comment: 32 pages, 3 figures

Positivity bounds represent nontrivial limitations on effective field theories (EFTs) if those EFTs are to be completed into a Lorentz-invariant, causal, local, and unitary framework. While such positivity bounds have been applied in a wide array of physical contexts to obtain useful constraints, their application to inflationary EFTs is subtle since Lorentz invariance is spontaneously broken during cosmic inflation. One path forward is to employ a $\textit{Breit parameterization}$ to ensure a crossing-symmetric and analytic S-matrix in theories with broken boosts. We extend this approach to a theory with multiple fields, and uncover a fundamental obstruction that arises unless all fields obey a dispersion relation that is approximately lightlike. We then apply the formalism to various classes of inflationary EFTs, with and without isocurvature perturbations, and employ this parameterization to derive new positivity bounds on such EFTs. For multifield inflation, we also consider bounds originating from the generalized optical theorem and demonstrate how these can give rise to stronger constraints on EFTs compared to constraints from traditional elastic positivity bounds alone. We compute various shapes of non-Gaussianity (NG), involving both adiabatic and isocurvature perturbations, and show how the observational parameter space controlling the strength of NG can be constrained by our bounds., Comment: 49 pages, 4 figures; v2: clarifications added, journal version

We point out some common qualitative features of the Coon amplitude$\unicode{x2014}$a family of deformations of the Veneziano amplitude with logarithmic Regge trajectories$\unicode{x2014}$and the open string scattering amplitude for strings ending on a D-brane in AdS. Both reduce to the Veneziano amplitude at relatively low energies. Both systems have an accumulation point in their spectrum, with an infinite number of states below a certain energy. The approach to this point is very similar. Both have the same high-energy fixed-angle behavior. Nevertheless, we find some differences in the spectrum of states with highest angular momentum. These similarities suggest that there may exist a string background that realizes the Coon amplitude., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

We construct new dispersive sum rules for the effective field theory of the standard model at mass dimension six. These spinning sum rules encode information about the spin of UV states: the sign of the IR Wilson coefficients carries a memory of the dominant spin in the UV completion. The sum rules are constructed for operators containing scalars and fermions, although we consider the dimension-six SMEFT exhaustively, outlining why equivalent relations do not hold for the remaining operators. As with any dimension-six dispersive argument, our conclusions are contingent on the absence of potential poles at infinity, so-called boundary terms, and we discuss in detail where these are expected to appear. There are a number of phenomenological applications of spinning sum rules, and as an example we explore the connection to the Peskin-Takeuchi parameters and, more generally, the set of oblique parameters in universal theories., Comment: 51 pages, 1 figure

We construct an infinite class of new ultraviolet-complete four-graviton scattering amplitudes that reduce to Einstein gravity at low energies, vanish at high energies, are meromorphic, and exhibit a triple-product structure ${\cal A}(s){\cal A}(t){\cal A}(u)$. The spectrum invariantly exhibits accumulation points in the form of infinite towers of states on each mass pole, whose residue can be positively expanded on tree-level exchanges of irreducible representations of the Lorentz group., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure

We uncover a symmetry of the linear Einstein equations near extremal horizons. Specifically, acting with a spherically symmetric linearized diffeomorphism on the perturbative solutions to the Einstein-Maxwell equations in the Bertotti-Robinson background, but not acting on the background itself, we find that there is a subset of such transformations under which the equations of motion remain satisfied, with or without additional matter. This represents an "accidental" symmetry in the sense that the set of transformations realizing the mapping among solutions is strictly larger than the ${\rm SL}(2)$ isometries of the background spacetime. We argue that our accidental symmetry can be thought of as an on-shell large diffeomorphism of ${\rm AdS}_2$, which we support in the context of Jackiw-Teitelboim theory., Comment: 20 pages

We investigate the properties of a special class of singular solutions for a self-gravitating perfect fluid in general relativity: the singular isothermal sphere. For arbitrary constant equation-of-state parameter $w=p/\rho$, there exist static, spherically-symmetric solutions with density profile $\propto 1/r^2$, with the constant of proportionality fixed to be a special function of $w$. Like black holes, singular isothermal spheres possess a fixed mass-to-radius ratio independent of size, but no horizon cloaking the curvature singularity at $r=0$. For $w=1$, these solutions can be constructed from a homogeneous dilaton background, where the metric spontaneously breaks spatial homogeneity. We study the perturbative structure of these solutions, finding the radial modes and tidal Love numbers, and also find interesting properties in the geodesic structure of this geometry. Finally, connections are discussed between these geometries and dark matter profiles, the double copy, and holographic entropy, as well as how the swampland distance conjecture can obscure the naked singularity., Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures

We consider the shift of charge-to-mass ratio for extremal black holes in the context of effective field theory, motivated by the Weak Gravity Conjecture. We constrain extremality corrections in different regimes subject to unitarity and causality constraints. In the asymptotic IR, we demonstrate that for any supersymmetric theory in flat space, and for all minimally coupled theories, logarithmic running at one loop pushes the Wilson coefficient of certain four-derivative operators to be larger at lower energies, guaranteeing the existence of sufficiently large black holes with $Q>M$. We identify two exceptional cases of nonsupersymmetric theories involving large numbers of light states and Planck-scale nonminimal couplings, in which the sign of the running is reversed, leading to black holes with negative corrections to $Q/M$ in the deep IR, but argue that these do not rule out extremal black holes as the requisite charged states for the WGC. We separately show that causality and unitarity imply that the leading threshold corrections to the effective action from integrating out massive states, in any weakly coupled theory, can be written as a sum of squares and is manifestly positive for black hole backgrounds. Quite beautifully, the shift in the extremal $Q/M$ ratio is directly proportional to the shift in the on-shell action, guaranteeing that these threshold corrections push $Q>M$ in compliance with the WGC. Our results apply for black holes with or without dilatonic coupling and charged under any number of ${\rm U}(1)$s., Comment: 41 pages, 5 figures

Physical properties of scattering amplitudes are mapped to the Riemann zeta function. Specifically, a closed-form amplitude is constructed, describing the tree-level exchange of a tower with masses $m_n^2 = \mu_n^2$, where $\zeta\left(\frac{1}{2} \pm i\mu_n\right) = 0$. Requiring real masses corresponds to the Riemann hypothesis, locality of the amplitude to meromorphicity of the zeta function, and universal coupling between massive and massless states to simplicity of the zeros of $\zeta$. Unitarity bounds from dispersion relations for the forward amplitude translate to positivity of the odd moments of the sequence of $1/\mu_n^2$., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures

We uncover a novel structure in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity: an ${\rm AdS}_2 \times S^2$ solution in string frame, which can be obtained by a near-horizon limit of the extreme GHS black hole with dilaton coupling $\lambda \neq 1$. Unlike the Bertotti-Robinson spacetime, our solution has independent length scales for the ${\rm AdS}_2$ and $S^2$, with ratio controlled by $\lambda$. We solve the perturbation problem for this solution, finding the independently propagating towers of states in terms of superpositions of gravitons, photons, and dilatons and their associated effective potentials. These potentials describe modes obeying conformal quantum mechanics, with couplings that we compute, and can be recast as giving the spectrum of the effective masses of the modes. By dictating the conformal weights of boundary operators, this spectrum provides crucial data for any future construction of a holographic dual to these ${\rm AdS}_2\times S^2$ configurations., Comment: 35 pages, 3 figures

We generalize the constructions for the multipartite reflected entropy in order to construct spacetimes capable of representing multipartite entanglement wedge cross sections of differing party number as Ryu-Takayanagi surfaces on a single replicated geometry. We devise a general algorithm for such constructions for arbitrary party number and demonstrate how such methods can be used to derive novel inequalities constraining mulipartite entanglement wedge cross sections., Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures

We define a bulk wormhole geometry interpolating between horizons of differing size and determine characteristics of the HRT surface in these geometries. This construction is dual to black hole mesostates, an intermediate coarse-graining of states between black hole microstates and the full black hole state. We analyze the distinguishability of these objects using the recently derived holographic Holevo information techniques, demonstrating novel phase transition behavior for such systems., Comment: 26 pages, 15 figures

We place theoretical constraints on the leading deviations to four-fermion standard model interactions. Invoking S-matrix analyticity and partial wave unitarity, we develop new dispersion relations that yield either spin-dependent sum rules on dimension-six fermionic operators or information about the amplitude's behavior at large momentum. The pattern of SMEFT inequalities we find for theories obeying certain large-momentum constraints enables a diagnosis of properties of emerging new physics. These relations form a bridge between new physics searches: discovery of flavor-violating $\tau$ decays at Belle II would motivate the search for flavor-conserving new physics below 25 TeV, as the results would provide definitive information about the UV., Comment: 10 pages, updated to published version

We show how wormholes in three spacetime dimensions can be customizably warped using pressureless matter. In particular, we exhibit a large new class of solutions in (2+1)-dimensional general relativity with energy-momentum tensor describing a negative cosmological constant and positive-energy dust. From this class of solutions, we construct wormhole geometries and study their geometric and holographic properties, including Ryu-Takayanagi surfaces, entanglement wedge cross sections, mutual information, and outer entropy. Finally, we construct a Python's Lunch geometry: a wormhole in asymptotically anti-de Sitter space with a local maximum in size near its middle., Comment: 32 pages, 8 figures

We use unitarity and analyticity of scattering amplitudes to constrain fermionic operators in the standard model effective field theory. For four-fermion operators at mass dimension 8, we scatter flavor superpositions in fixed standard model representations and find the Wilson coefficients to be constrained so that their contraction with any pair of pure density matrices is positive. These constraints imply that flavor-violating couplings are upper-bounded by their flavor-conserving cousins. For instance, LEP data already appears to preclude certain operators in upcoming $\mu \to 3e$ measurements., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure; v3 corrected a sign in the definition of several operators

We construct entangled states of gluons that scatter exactly as if they were gravitons. Operationally, these objects implement the double copy at the level of the wave function. Our analysis begins with a general ansatz for a wave function characterizing gluons in two copies of ${\rm SU}(N)$ gauge theory. Given relatively minimal assumptions following from permutation invariance and dimensional analysis, the three- and four-particle wave functions generate scattering amplitudes that automatically coincide exactly with gravity, modulo normalization. For five-particle scattering the match is not automatic but imposing certain known selection rules on the amplitude is sufficient to uniquely reproduce gravity. The resulting amplitudes exhibit a color-dressed and permutation-invariant form of the usual double copy relations. We compute the entanglement entropy between the two gauge theory copies and learn that these states are maximally-entangled at large $N$. Moreover, this approach extends immediately to effective field theories, where Born-Infeld photons and Galileons can be similarly recast as entangled gluons and pions., Comment: 20 pages, added clarifications

We study the effects of gravitationally-driven decoherence on tunneling processes associated with false vacuum decays, such as the Coleman--De~Luccia instanton. We compute the thermal graviton-induced decoherence rate for a wave function describing a perfect fluid of nonzero energy density in a finite region. When the effective cosmological constant is positive, the thermal graviton background sourced by a de Sitter horizon provides an unavoidable decoherence effect, which may have important consequences for tunneling processes in cosmological history. We discuss generalizations and consequences of this effect and comment on its observability and applications to black hole physics., Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures; comments welcome

We derive bounds on couplings in the standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) as a consequence of causality and the analytic structure of scattering amplitudes. In the SMEFT, there are 64 independent operators at mass dimension eight that are quartic in bosons (either Higgs or gauge fields) and that contain four derivatives and/or field strengths, including both CP-conserving and CP-violating operators. Using analytic dispersion relation arguments for two-to-two bosonic scattering amplitudes, we derive 27 independent bounds on the sign or magnitude of the couplings. We show that these bounds also follow as a consequence of causality of signal propagation in nonvacuum SM backgrounds. These bounds come in two qualitative forms: i) positivity of (various linear combinations of) couplings of CP-even operators and ii) upper bounds on the magnitude of CP-odd operators in terms of (products of) CP-even couplings. We exhibit various classes of example completions, which all satisfy our EFT bounds. These bounds have consequences for current and future particle physics experiments, as part of the observable parameter space is inconsistent with causality and analyticity. To demonstrate the impact of our bounds, we consider applications both to SMEFT constraints derived at colliders and to limits on the neutron electric dipole moment, highlighting the connection between such searches suggested by infrared consistency., Comment: 64 pages, 10 figures, updated Table 2

We apply the bit thread formulation of holographic entanglement entropy to reduced states describing only the geometry contained within an entanglement wedge. We argue that a certain optimized bit thread configuration, which we construct, gives a purification of the reduced state to a full holographic state obeying a precise set of conditional mutual information relations. When this purification exists, we establish, under certain assumptions, the conjectured $E_P = E_W$ relation equating the entanglement of purification with the area of the minimal cross section partitioning the bulk entanglement wedge. Along the way, we comment on minimal purifications of holographic states, geometric purifications, and black hole geometries., Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures

We derive new bounds on higher-dimension operator coefficients in four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell theory. Positivity of classically-generated corrections to the Wald entropy of thermodynamically stable, rotating dyonic black holes implies a multiparameter family of field basis invariant inequalities that exhibit electromagnetic duality and are satisfied by examples from field and string theory. These bounds imply that effective operators modify the extremality condition of large black holes so as to permit their decay to smaller ones, thus satisfying the weak gravity conjecture., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures

We define the coarse-grained entropy of a `normal' surface $\sigma$, i.e., a surface that is neither trapped nor antitrapped. Following Engelhardt and Wall, the entropy is defined in terms of the area of an auxiliary extremal surface. This area is maximized over all auxiliary geometries that can be constructed in the interior of $\sigma$, while holding fixed the spatial exterior (the outer wedge). We argue that the area is maximized when the stress tensor in the auxiliary geometry vanishes, and we develop a formalism for computing it under this assumption. The coarse-grained entropy can be interpreted as a quasilocal energy of $\sigma$. This energy possesses desirable properties such as positivity and monotonicity, which derive directly from its information-theoretic definition., Comment: 40 pages, 3 figures