Related papers: Balancing the vacuum energy in heterotic $M$-theor…
A new model for the origin of dark energy is proposed based on the Casimir effect in a supersymmetry-breaking brane-world. Supersymmetry is assumed to be preserved in the bulk while broken on a 3-brane. Due to the boundary conditions…
It is shown that strongly coupled heterotic M-theory with anti-five-branes in the S^1/Z_2 bulk space can have meta-stable vacua which break N=1 supersymmetry and have a small, positive cosmological constant. This is demonstrated for the…
The problem of the stabilization of moduli is discussed within the context of compactified strongly coupled heterotic string theory. It is shown that all geometric, vector bundle and five-brane moduli are completely fixed, within a…
In this talk we discuss a few relevant aspects of heterotic M-theory. These are the stabilization of the two relevant moduli (the length of the eleventh segment (pi rho) and the volume of the internal six manifold (V)) in models where…
Strongly coupled heterotic $E_8\times E_8$ string theory, compactified to four dimensions on a large Calabi-Yau manifold ${\bf X}$, may represent a viable candidate for the description of low-energy particle phenomenology. In this regime,…
The primary focus of this dissertation is the study of the Casimir effect and the possibility that this phenomenon may serve as a mechanism to mediate higher dimensional stability, and also as a possible mechanism for creating a small but…
We consider the phenomenological consequences of fixing compactification moduli. In the simplest KKLT constructions, stabilization of internal dimensions is rather soft: weak scale masses for moduli are generated, and are of order m_\sigma…
We study the sub-structure of the heterotic Kahler moduli space due to the presence of non-Abelian internal gauge fields from the perspective of the four-dimensional effective theory. Internal gauge fields can be supersymmetric in some…
In our five-dimensional cosmological model, we investigate the role of a Lorentz violating vector "{\ae}ther" field on the moduli stabilization mechanism. We consider the case of a space-like {\ae}ther field on a compact circle with…
The action for gravity and the standard model includes, as well as the positive energy fermion and boson fields, negative energy fields. The Hamiltonian for the action leads through a positive and negative energy symmetry of the vacuum to a…
Recently, it was found by Greene and Levin that the Casimir energy of certain combinations of massless and massive fields in space with extra dimensions play a crucial role in the accelerated expansion of the late-time universe and…
We discuss the role Casimir energies may play in addressing issues of moduli stabilization and dark energy. In particular, we examine a (non-supersymmetric) brane world scenario with toroidal extra dimensions in which Casimir energies of…
We compute the one-loop Casimir energy of gravity and matter fields, obeying various boundary conditions, in 5-dimensional S^1/Z_2 and 6-dimensional T^2/Z_k orbifolds. We discuss the role of the Casimir energy in possible radius…
We study the stabilization of one spatial dimension in (p+1+1)-dimensional spacetime in the presence of $p$-dimensional brane(s), a bulk cosmological constant and the Casimir force generated by a conformally coupled scalar field. We find…
The Standard Model is the low-energy limit of a microscopic theory which includes extra dimensions and new symmetries. A part of my thesis consisted in constructing a new class of models with two extra dimensions. We showed that these…
The vacuum fluctuations give rise to a number of phenomena; however, the the Casimir Effect is arguably the most salient manifestation of the quantum vacuum. In its most basic form it is realized through the interaction of a pair of neutral…
We study the cosmological inflation from the viewpoint of the moduli stabilization. We study the scenario that the superpotential has a large value during the inflation era enough to stabilize moduli, but it is small in the true vacuum.…
We investigate the role of Casimir energy as a mechanism for brane stability in five-dimensional models with the fifth dimension compactified on an S^1\Z_2 orbifold, which includes the Randall-Sundrum two brane model (RS1). We employ a…
A braneworld model for neutrino Dark Energy (DE) is presented. We consider a five dimensional two-branes set up with a bulk scalar field motivated by supergravity. Its low-energy effective theory is derived with a moduli space approximation…
We study supersymmetric models with double gaugino condensations in the hidden sector, where the gauge couplings depend on two light moduli of superstring theory. We perform a detailed analysis of this class of model and show that there is…