Related papers: Integrable Scalar Cosmologies I. Foundations and l…
We study the cosmology of a recent model of supersymmetry breaking, in the presence of a tuneable positive cosmological constant, based on a gauged shift symmetry of a string modulus that can be identified with the string dilaton. The…
In the context of a five-dimensional brane-world model motivated from heterotic M-theory, we develop a framework for potential-driven brane-world inflation. Specifically this involves a classification of the various background solutions of…
We compare the simplest realistic brane inflationary model to recent cosmological data, including WMAP 3-year cosmic microwave background (CMB) results, Sloan Digital Sky Survey luminous red galaxies (SDSS LRG) power spectrum data and…
Following Freivogel {\it et al} we consider inflation in a predictive (or `friendly') region of the landscape of string vacua, as modeled by Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Kachru. In such a region the dimensionful coefficients of…
Compactification and symmetry breaking events in theories of heterotic superstrings implicitly indicate five inflation events. Scales of 10^{9} ly and larger are modeled in terms of these events. The proposed model accounts qualitatively…
We propose a new class of inflationary models in which the scalar field potential governing inflation is generated by the same non-perturbative gauge dynamics that may lead to supersymmetry breaking. Such models satisfy constraints from…
We propose a model of inflation in the framework of brane cosmology driven by background supergravity. Starting from bulk supergravity we construct the inflaton potential on the brane and employ it to investigate for the consequences to…
We use cosmic microwave background and large scale structure data to test a broad and physically well-motivated class of inflationary models: those with flat tree-level potentials (typical in supersymmetry). The non-trivial features of the…
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…
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…
Recently it was argued that an inflationary potential yielding power spectra characterized by a scale-invariant tensorial spectral index and a weakly scale-dependent scalar spectral index might account for a generic large-scale structure…
We show that if the $\alpha$-attractor model is realized by the spontaneous breaking of the scale symmetry, then the stability and the dynamics of the vector field that gauges the scale symmetry can severely constrain the $\alpha$-parameter…
Bouncing cosmologies, suggested by String/M-theory, may provide an alternative to standard inflation to account for the origin of inhomogeneities in our universe. The fundamental question regards the correct way to evolve the scalar…
We study a new framework for brane-antibrane inflation where moduli stabilisation relies purely on perturbative corrections to the effective action. This guarantees that the model does not suffer from the eta-problem. The inflationary…
We propose a minimal model framework for physics below the Planck scale with the following features: (i) it is based on no-scale supergravity, as favoured in many string compactifications, (ii) it incorporates Starobinsky-like inflation,…
Cosmological inflation predicts that the scalar spectral index "runs" with scale. Constraints on the values of the spectral runnings, $\alpha_s\equiv \textrm{d} n_s/\textrm{d}\ln k$ and $\beta_s\equiv \textrm{d}\alpha_s/\textrm{d}\ln k$,…
The inflationary paradigm provides a robust description of the peculiar initial conditions which are required for the success of the Hot Big Bang model of cosmology, as well as of the recent precision measurements of temperature…
We construct a model of inflation in string theory after carefully taking into account moduli stabilization. The setting is a warped compactification of Type IIB string theory in the presence of D3 and anti-D3-branes. The inflaton is the…
In scalar-tensor theories the scalar fields generically couple nontrivially to gravity. We study the observable properties of inflationary models with non-minimally coupled inflaton and Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) kinetic term. Within the…
A matter-coupled scalar field model is presented in obtaining a scalar fifth force when the constraint of the current cosmological constant is satisfied. The interaction potential energy density between the scalar field and matter has a…