Background instability of quintessence model in light of entropy and distance conjecture

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Seo, Min-Seok
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Seo, Min-Seok
author_facet Seo, Min-Seok
contents We apply the covariant entropy bound argument supporting the de Sitter swampland conjecture to the quintessence model, to find out the condition for the background to be unstable. More concretely, the background is unstable when the matter entropy given by the species number of the effective field theory increases more rapidly than the geometrical entropy proportional to the apparent horizon area, since it contradicts the covariant entropy bound. The rapid increase in the matter entropy is proposed by the distance conjecture, which states that the time evolution of some scalar field along the geodesic in the field space brings about the descent of a tower of states from UV. From this, we find that for the quintessence model, the accelerating background having the event horizon is unstable, and the instability condition as well as the lifetime of the unstable background is equivalent to the trans-Planckian censorship bound forbidding the classicalization of the trans-Planckian modes. We also point out that the scale separation between the Kaluza-Klein mass scale and the Hubble parameter can be realized when the product between the increasing rates of the matter and the geometrical entropies is bounded from below, which is consistent with the AdS distance conjecture. Our study suggests that various swampland conjectures can be comprehensively understood in the language of the entropy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_21136
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Background instability of quintessence model in light of entropy and distance conjecture
Seo, Min-Seok
High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
We apply the covariant entropy bound argument supporting the de Sitter swampland conjecture to the quintessence model, to find out the condition for the background to be unstable. More concretely, the background is unstable when the matter entropy given by the species number of the effective field theory increases more rapidly than the geometrical entropy proportional to the apparent horizon area, since it contradicts the covariant entropy bound. The rapid increase in the matter entropy is proposed by the distance conjecture, which states that the time evolution of some scalar field along the geodesic in the field space brings about the descent of a tower of states from UV. From this, we find that for the quintessence model, the accelerating background having the event horizon is unstable, and the instability condition as well as the lifetime of the unstable background is equivalent to the trans-Planckian censorship bound forbidding the classicalization of the trans-Planckian modes. We also point out that the scale separation between the Kaluza-Klein mass scale and the Hubble parameter can be realized when the product between the increasing rates of the matter and the geometrical entropies is bounded from below, which is consistent with the AdS distance conjecture. Our study suggests that various swampland conjectures can be comprehensively understood in the language of the entropy.
title Background instability of quintessence model in light of entropy and distance conjecture
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.21136