English

String-inspired cosmology

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-11-07 v1 Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

I discuss cosmological models either derived from, or inspired by, string theory or M-theory. In particular I discuss solutions in the low-energy effective theory and the role of the dilaton, moduli and antisymmetric form fields in the dimensionally reduced effective action. The pre big bang model is an attempt to use cosmological solutions to make observational predictions. I then discuss the effective theory of gravity found in recent brane-world models where we live on a 3-brane embedded in a five-dimensional spacetime and how the study of cosmological perturbations may enable us to test these ideas.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0203107,
  title  = {String-inspired cosmology},
  author = {David Wands},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0203107},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

15 pages, 5 figures, latex with iopart, invited talk at `The Early Universe and Cosmological Observations: a Critical Review', Cape Town, July 2001