Title: Species, Scales, and Minimal Black Holes

by Alvaro Herráez (MPP Munich)

Monday 28 Oct 2024, 13:00 → 15:00 Europe/Berlin

Abstract: After a brief review of various arguments motivating the species scale as the maximum possible cutoff for any gravitational EFT, we will first focus on its relationship to minimal black holes. These objects play a crucial role in understanding entropy bounds, serving as intermediaries between the thermodynamics of a box of species and the thermodynamics of black holes. We will explain this connection using simple thermodynamic considerations combined with gravitational collapse bounds, and undertand it in the broader context of a Black Hole-Tower correspondence, a generalization of the well-known Black Hole-String correspondence. In the second part of the talk, we will review different but complementary approaches to studying the species scale, based on scattering amplitudes in supersymmetric setups, and examine these in light of conventional understandings of cutoff scales in EFTs. We will show how the gravitational sector of the theory “sees” different cutoff scales through various types of higher-curvature operators, drawing general conclusions for the structure of gravitational EFTs.