Generalized Symmetries, Gravity, and the Swampland

Understand

Generalized global symmetries are a common feature of many quantum field theories decoupled from gravity.

• By contrast, in quantum gravity / the Swampland program, it is widely expected that all global symmetries are either gauged or broken, and this breaking is in turn related to the expected completeness of the spectrum of charged states in quantum gravity.
• We investigate the fate of such symmetries in the context of 7D and 5D vacua realized by compact Calabi-Yau spaces with localized singularities in M-theory.
• We explicitly show how gravitational backgrounds support additional dynamical degrees of freedom which trivialize (i.e.,"break") the higher symmetries of the local geometric models.