Axion Hilltops, Kahler Modulus Quintessence and the Swampland Criteria

Understand

We study the interplay between extrema of axion potentials, Kahler moduli stabilization and the swampland criteria.

• We argue that moving away from the minima of non-perturbatively generated axion potentials can lead to a runaway behavior of moduli that govern the couplings in the effective field theory.
• The proper inclusion of these degrees of freedom resolves the conflict between periodic axion potentials and the gradient de Sitter criterion, without the need to invoke the refined de Sitter criterion.
• We investigate the possibility of including this runaway direction as a model of quintessence that satisfies the swampland criteria.