Related papers: Cosmic strings and Natural Inflation

String theory counterparts to Einstein's gravity, cosmology and inflation are described. A very tight upper bound on the Cosmic Gravitational Radiation Background (CGRB) of standard inflation is shown to be evaded in string cosmology, while…

We emphasize that the estimation of cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy data, such as the recent high resolution maps from BOOMERanG and MAXIMA-1, requires assumptions about the primordial spectra. The…

The idea of GUT implies that the universe went through a series of phase transitions during which topological defects are expected to form. We investigate here the genericity of cosmic strings formation in realistic SUSY GUTs models. We…

ABSRACT: We review recent progress on testing the hypothesis of the existence of cosmic string perturbations in microwave background maps. Using an analytical model for the string network we show that the predicted amplitude and spectrum of…

We embed natural inflation in an explict string theory model and derive observables in cosmology. We achieve this by compactifying the type IIB string on a Calabi-Yau orientifold, stabilizing moduli via the Large Volume Scenario, and…

Cosmic strings are linear concentrations of energy that form whenever phase transitions in the early universe break axial symmetries as originally shown by Kibble. They are the result of frustrated order in the quantum fields responsible…

Cosmic inflation claims to make the initial conditions of the standard big bang "generic". But Boltzmann taught us that the thermodynamic arrow of time arises from very non-generic ("low entropy") initial conditions. I discuss how to…

We provide type IIB string embeddings of two axion variants of natural inflation. We use a combination of RR 2 form axions as the inflaton field and have its potential generated by non perturbative effects in the superpotential. Besides…

This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…

The observational status of inflation after the Planck 2013 and 2015 results and the BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck joint analysis is discussed. These pedagogical lecture notes are intended to serve as a technical guide filling the gap…

Whilst standard field theoretic Cosmic Strings cannot end, Cosmic Superstrings can form three string junctions, at which each string ends. This opens up a new class of possible boundary conditions for such strings and we show that, at least…

Generic features of models of inflation obtained from string compactifications are the correlations between the model parameters and the postinflationary evolution of the universe. Thus, the postinflationary evolution depends on the…

Cosmic strings are linear topological defects which are hypothesized to be produced during inflation. Most searches for strings have been relying on the string's lensing of background galaxies or CMB. In this paper I obtained the solution…

In a previous paper we proposed a new approach to the beginning of inflation -- a lingering universe. The universe begins in a lingering state with a nearly vanishing Hubble parameter. This calls into question the absolute age of the…

We compute the string production rate at the end of inflation, using the string spectrum obtained in \lss in a near-de Sitter space. Our result shows that highly excited strings are hardly produced, thus the simple slow-roll inflation alone…

We study the CMB observables in axion monodromy inflation. These well-motivated scenarios for inflation in string theory have monomial potentials over super-Planckian field ranges, with superimposed sinusoidal modulations from instanton…

This paper represents an in-depth treatment of the chain inflation scenario. We fully determine the evolution of the universe in the model, the necessary conditions in order to have a successful inflationary period, and the matching with…

In this paper we consider an inflating universe with long straight cosmic string along z-axis. We show that the effect of cosmic string can be taken as a perturbation on the background of FRW metric. Then by doing cosmological perturbations…

The theory of cosmological perturbations is the main tool which connects theories of the early universe (based on new fundamental physics such as string theory) with cosmological observations. In these lectures, I will provide an…

We review the latest developments in the determination of the cosmological parameters from the measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) anisotropies and of the Large Scale Structure (LSS) of the Universe. We comment…