Related papers: From Axions to Other WISPs
These lecture notes provide an overview of high-energy astrophysical processes involving axions, axion-like particles (ALPs), and other weakly interacting slim particles (WISPs) focusing on their potential observational signatures in…
We consider heterotic string compactifications to four dimensions when instantons shrink to zero size. If the standard model gauge group originates from the new gauge symmetry associated with the small instantons singularity, then the…
We demonstrate that asymmetric reheating arises in a large ensemble of string compactifications with many axions and gauged dark sectors. This phenomenon may help avoid numerous cosmological problems that may arise if the sectors were…
While axions seem ubiquitous in critical string theories, whether they might survive in any string theoretic description of nature is a difficult question. With some mild assumptions, one can frame the issues in the case that there is an…
Axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) are well-motivated low-energy relics of high-energy extensions of the Standard Model, which interact with the known particles through higher-dimensional operators suppressed by the mass scale $\Lambda$…
We investigate orbifold compactifications of the heterotic string, addressing in detail their construction, classification and phenomenological potential. We present a strategy to search for models resembling the minimal supersymmetric…
We study the compactification of the $(2,0)$ and type-II little-string theories on $S^1$, $T^2$ and $T^3$ with an R-symmetry twist that preserves half the supersymmetry. We argue that it produces the same moduli spaces of vacua as…
We generalize to the case of compactified superstrings a construction given previously for critical superstrings of finite one loop amplitudes that are well-defined for all external momenta. The novel issues that arise for compactified…
We motivate a relation between dark energy and the scale of new physics in weakly coupled string theory. This mixing between infrared and ultraviolet physics leads to a unique corner for real-world phenomenology: barring fine-tunings, we…
We argue that quintessence may reside in certain corners of the string landscape. It arises as a linear combination of internal space components of higher rank forms, which are axion-like at low energies, and may mix with 4-forms after…
Dynamical mechanisms to generate an ultralight axion of mass $\sim 10^{-21}-10^{-22}$ eV in supergravity and strings are discussed. An ultralight particle of this mass provides a candidate for dark matter that may play a role for cosmology…
In this lecture, starting with GUT we go through the field theoretic and stringy orbifold compactification of extra dimensions toward their application to low energy particle physics.
We investigate a new type of dark matter with couplings to ordinary matter naturally suppressed by at least one order of magnitude compared to weak interactions. Despite the extra-weak interactions massive particles of this type (XWIMPs)…
String theory axions appear to be promising candidates for explaining cosmological constant via quintessence. In this paper, we study conditions on the string compactifications under which axion quintessence can happen. For sufficiently…
I review the ideas leading to the QCD axion and also comment on the Jarlskog determinant describing the observed weak CP violation, and the axion-related Kim-Nilles-Peloso inflation. All of these use pseudoscalars, and the underlying…
String theory compactifications come with numerous $U(1)$ factors, implying the presence of many hidden photons in the low-energy EFT. One may call this the ``string photoverse''. We argue that, generically, these hidden photons are…
The aim of this talk is to provide non-experts with a brief and elementary introduction on the field of extra dimensions. The main motivation for extra dimensions relies on the more fundamental string theories that predict ten (or eleven)…
We study effective potentials coming from compactifications of string theory. We show that, under mild assumptions, such potentials are bounded from below in four dimensions, giving an affirmative answer to a conjecture proposed by the…
Ultra-light axions ($m_a\lesssim 10^{-18}$eV), motivated by string theory, can be a powerful probe of the energy scale of inflation. In contrast to heavier axions the isocurvature modes in the ultra-light axions can coexist with observable…
Axions are light pseudoscalar bosons postulated with many motivations in particle physics and cosmology, including the strong CP problem and the dark matter in our Universe. In this lecture notes, we discuss a variety of known ultraviolet…