Positivity of Amplitudes, Weak Gravity Conjecture, and Modified Gravity

Abstract

We derive new positivity bounds for scattering amplitudes in theories with a massless graviton in the spectrum in four spacetime dimensions, of relevance for the weak gravity conjecture and modified gravity theories. The bounds imply that extremal black holes are self-repulsive, M/|Q|<1 in suitable units, and that they are unstable to decay to smaller extremal black holes, providing an S-matrix proof of the weak gravity conjecture. We also present other applications of our bounds to the effective field theory of weakly broken Galileons, axions, and P(X) theories.