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We consider supergravity compactifications on 6-dimensional twisted tori, which are 5-torus fibrations of the circle. The motion of branes on such manifolds can lead to power-law potentials at low energy, that may be useful for inflation.…
We propose a new type of axion inflation with complex structure moduli in the framework of type IIB superstring theory compactified on Calabi-Yau manifold. The inflaton is identified as the axion for the complex structure moduli whose…
It is known that supersymmetric hybrid inflation model may require severe tunings on the initial condition for large gravitino mass of order 100 - 1000 TeV due to the constant term in the superpotential. We propose a modified hybrid…
We argue that moduli stabilization generically restricts the evolution following transitions between weakly coupled de Sitter vacua and can induce a strong selection bias towards inflationary cosmologies. The energy density of domain walls…
We study possible string theory compactifications which, in the low-energy limit, describe chaotic inflation with a stabilizer field. We first analyze type IIA setups where the inflationary potential arises from a D6-brane wrapping an…
The viability of slow-roll approximation is examined by considering the structure of phase spaces in scalar-tensor theories of gravitation and the analysis is exemplified with a nonminimally coupled scalar field to the spacetime curvature.…
We revisit the F-term hybrid inflation model in supergravity. In particular, we point out that a constant term in the superpotential has significant effects on the inflaton dynamics. It is shown that the hybrid inflation model suffers from…
We study the problem of moduli stabilisation in explicit heterotic orbifold compactifications, whose spectra contain the MSSM plus some vector-like exotics that can be decoupled. Considering all the bulk moduli, we obtain the 4D low energy…
It is well known that large Hubble-induced supergravity corrections to the inflaton field can ruin the flatness of the potential, thus creating a tension between slow-roll inflation and supergravity. In this paper we show that it is…
Recently, a class of inflation models in supergravity with gauge non-singlet matter fields as the inflaton has been proposed. It is based on a `tribrid' structure in the superpotential and on a Heisenberg symmetry for solving the…
We investigate the constraints of slow-roll inflation on the string worldsheet. A general gravity-matter set-up is used in which the worldsheet consists of an abstract CFT coupled to a 3+1 dimensional non-linear sigma model. The empirical…
We investigate the possibility of inflation with models of antisymmetric tensor field having minimal and nonminimal couplings to gravity. Although the minimal model does not support inflation, the nonminimal models, through the introduction…
In this note we point out that, contrary to the standard point of view, slow roll inflation is due to high gravitational friction. We show that the requirement of slow roll coincides with the requirement of a flat scalar field potential in…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture, if valid, rules out simple models of Natural Inflation by restricting their axion decay constant to be sub-Planckian. We revisit stringy attempts to realise Natural Inflation, with a single open string axionic…
In this thesis we study compactifications of type II string theories and M-theory to four dimensions. We construct the four-dimensional N=2 supergravities that arise from compactifications of type IIA string theory and M-theory on manifolds…
We reconsider the problems of cosmological inflation in effective supergravity theories. A singlet field in a hidden sector is demonstrated to yield an acceptable inflationary potential, without fine tuning. In the simplest such model, the…
In standard multi-field models, tachyonic isocurvature perturbations generally indicate the presence of an instability. We revisit the stability of some known counterexamples and show that, in a certain class of models that we call ultra…
A systematic analysis of possibilities for realizing single-field F-term axion monodromy inflation via the flux-induced superpotential in type IIB string theory is performed. In this well-defined setting the conditions arising from moduli…
We go a step further in the search for a consistent and realistic supergravity model of large-field inflation by building a class of models with the following features: during slow-roll, all the scalar fields other than the inflaton are…
We clarify under what conditions slow-roll inflation can continue almost undisturbed, while briefly evolving through a (semi-classically) metastable false vacuum. Furthermore, we look at potential signatures in the primordial power spectrum…