Axion hilltops, Kahler modulus quintessence and the swampland criteria

We study the interplay among extrema of axion potentials, Kahler moduli stabilization and the swampland criteria. We argue that moving away from the minima of nonperturbatively 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. Using a single nonperturbative effect, the maximum along the axion direction provides such a runaway direction, which is unstable in the axion directions, sensitive to initial conditions and too steep to allow for a Hubble time of expansion without violating the field excursion criterion. Adding a second nonperturbative effect generates a saddle point in the potential satisfying the refined de Sitter criterion, which solves the steepness problem and improves the initial conditions problem although some fine-tuning remains required.