Related papers: The Overshoot Problem and Giant Structures
In spite of the phenomenological successes of the inflationary universe scenario, the current realizations of inflation making use of scalar fields lead to serious conceptual problems which are reviewed in this lecture. String theory may…
Most current models of low mass red giant stars do not reproduce the observed position of the red giant branch luminosity bump, a diagnostic of the maximum extent of the convective envelope during the first dredge up. Global asteroseismic…
We propose a simple realization of hybrid inflation in supergravity, which does not require any unnaturally small parameters. Inflation in this scenario is relatively short, and inflationary density perturbations fall down on large scales,…
Long standing themes in inflation include the issue of large field vs. small field inflation as well as the question what fraction of phase space leads to sufficient inflation, and furthermore is compatible with the experimental data. In…
We explore inflationary trajectories within randomly-generated two-dimensional potentials, considered as a toy model of the string landscape. Both the background and perturbation equations are solved numerically, the latter using the…
When Inflation is embedded in a fundamental theory, such as string theory, it typically begins when the Universe is already substantially larger than the fundamental scale [such as the one defined by the string length scale]. This is…
Inflation, as currently understood, requires the presence of fields with very flat potentials. Supersymmetric models in which supersymmetry breaking is communicated by supergravity naturally yield such fields, but the scales are typically…
A supersymmetric theory with several scalar superfields generically has several domain wall type classical configurations which interpolate between various supersymmetric vacua of the scalar fields. Depending on the couplings, some of these…
In spite of its great phenomenological success, current models of scalar field-driven inflation suffer from important unresolved conceptual issues. New fundamental physics will be required to address these questions. String theory is a…
We show that the naive application of the Kibble mechanism seriously underestimates the initial density of cosmic superstrings that can be formed during the annihilation of D-branes in the early universe, as in models of brane-antibrane…
We propose a new, generic mechanism of inflation mediated by a balance between potential forces and a Chern-Simons interaction. Such quasi-topological interactions are ubiquitous in string theory. In the minisuperspace approximation, their…
Fundamental formulae representing the density perturbation spectrums generated in inflationary scenarios are rigorously proved. Quantum fluctuations as initial conditions for structure generation in some inflationary era can be calculated…
The first part of this review tries to provide a self-contained view of supersymmetry breaking from the bottom-up perspective. We thus describe N=1 supersymmetry in four dimensions, the Standard Model and the MSSM, with emphasis on the…
Supersymmetry breaking in string theory is expected to occur when moduli fields acquire non-trivial expectation values. In the early universe these fields start out displaced from their final destinations. I present some recent ideas about…
The inflationary scenario has become the paradigm of early universe cosmology, and - in conjuction with ideas from superstring theory - has led to speculations about an "inflationary multiverse". From a point of view of phenomenology, the…
The "central" region of moduli space of M- and string theories is where the string coupling is about unity and the volume of compact dimensions is about the string volume. Here we argue that in this region the non-perturbative potential…
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…
Global topological defects may account for the large cold spot observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We explore possibilities of constructing models of supersymmetric F-term hybrid inflation, where the waterfall fields are globally…
We study the effects of the interaction terms between the inflaton fields on the inflationary dynamics in multi-field models. With power law type potential and interactions, the total number of e-folds may get considerably reduced and can…
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…