Related papers: Topology from Cosmology
Bimetric theory describes gravitational interactions in the presence of an extra spin-2 field. Previous work has suggested that its cosmological solutions are generically plagued by instabilities. We show that by taking the Planck mass for…
The potential role of cosmic topological defects has raised interest in the astrophysical community for many years now. In this set of notes, we give an introduction to the subject of cosmic topological defects and some of their possible…
We use cosmography to present constraints on the kinematics of the Universe without postulating any underlying theoretical model a priori. To this end, we use a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis to perform comparisons to the supernova Ia…
The standard cosmological model does not determine the spatial topology of the universe. This article revisits the signature of a non-trivial topology on the properties of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. We show that the…
Even when completely and consistently formulated, a fundamental theory of physics and cosmological boundary conditions may not give unambiguous and unique predictions for the universe we observe; indeed inflation, string/M theory, and…
Horndeski derived a most general vector-tensor theory in which the vector field respects the gauge symmetry and the resulting dynamical equations are of second order. The action contains only one free parameter, $\lambda$, that determines…
We investigate an alternative compactification of extra dimensions using local cosmic string in the Brans-Dicke gravity framework. In the context of dynamical systems it is possible to show that there exist a stable field configuration for…
We discuss some recent attempts to reconcile cosmology with supergravity and M/string theory. First of all, we point out that in extended supergravities the scalar masses are quantized in terms of the cosmological constant in de Sitter…
In the light of $\phi$-mapping topological current theory, the structure of cosmic strings are obtained from the Abelian Higgs model, which is an effective description to the brane world cosmic string system. In this topological description…
If the assumption that physical space has a trivial topology is dropped, then the Universe may be described by a multiply connected Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre model on a sub-horizon scale. Specific candidates for the multiply connected space…
An overview is given of the formulation of low-energy string cosmologies together with examples of particular solutions, successes and problems of the theory.
We find de Sitter and flat space solutions with all moduli stabilized in four dimensional supergravity theories derived from the heterotic and type II string theories, and explain how all the previously known obstacles to finding such…
I review type IIB string compactifications in which the three-form field strengths satisfy a self-duality condition on the internal manifold. I begin with an overview of the models, giving preliminary formulae and several points of view…
Recently it was observed that the hyperbolic compactification of M/string theory related to S-branes may lead to a transient period of acceleration of the universe. We study time evolution of the corresponding effective 4d cosmological…
We study compactifications of type IIA string theory on Calabi-Yau manifolds that are mirror to a subset of the type IIB LARGE-volume models. A combination of flux, alpha' corrections and non-perturbative effects stabilises the moduli in a…
We study a theory which generalizes the nonminimal coupling of matter to gravity by including derivative couplings. This leads to several interesting new dynamical phenomena in cosmology. In particular, the range of parameters in which…
We obtain cosmological constraints on models of inflation which exhibit rapid roll solutions. Rapid roll attractors exist for potentials with large mass terms and are thus of interest for inflationary model building within string theory. We…
We investigate to what extent the cosmic crystallographic methods aimed to detect the topology of the universe using catalogues of cosmic objects would be damaged by various observational uncertainties. We find that the topological…
We discuss some topological constraints on Type IIB string theory that cannot be described by elementary characteristic classes. Anomaly cancellation of the worldvolume theory of a D3-brane requires a shifted Dirac quantization condition of…
We investigate the consequences of two assumptions for String (or M) Theory, namely that: 1) all coordinates are compact and bound by the horizon of observation, 2) the ``dynamics'' of compactification is determined by the ``second law of…