Landscape versus Swampland for Higher Derivative Gravity

Abstract

We survey recent studies of Gauss-Bonnet gravity and its dual conformal field theories, including their relation to the violation of the Kovtun-Starinets-Son viscosity bound. Via holography, we can also study properties such as microcausality and unitarity of boundary field theory duals. Such studies in turn supply constraints on bulk gravitational theories, consigning some of them to the swampland.