Related papers: Les Houches lectures on inflationary observables a…
An overview is given of the way in which the unification program of particle physics has evolved into the proposal of superstring theory as a prime candidate for unifying quantum gravity with the other forces and particles of nature. A key…
Inflationary cosmology is the leading explanation of the very early universe. Many different models of inflation have been constructed which fit current observational data. In this work theoretical and numerical methods for constraining the…
These notes present a brief introduction to Hot Big Bang cosmology and Cosmic Inflation, together with a selection of some recent attempts to embed inflation into string theory. They provide a partial description of lectures presented in…
Large extra dimensions are one of the constructions addressing the hierarchy problem of the Standard Model. Their main theoretical and phenomenological challenge is that already predicting LHC effects requires an ultraviolet completion of…
The ultraviolet cutoff on a quantum field theory can be interpreted as a condensate of the affine curvature such that while the maximum of the affine action gives the power-law corrections, its minimum leads to the emergence of gravity.…
We quantitatively estimate the leading higher derivative corrections to ${\mathcal{N}}=1$ supergravity derived from IIB string compactifications and study how they may affect moduli stabilisation and LVS inflation models. Using the…
We review the relation between the inflationary potential and the spectra of density (scalar) perturbations and gravitational waves (tensor perturbations) produced, with particular emphasis on the possibility of reconstructing the inflaton…
We examine various entropic inflation scenarios, under the light of eternality. After describing the inflation realization and the normal condition for inflation to last at the background level, we investigate the conditions for eternal…
The validity of warm inflation is investigated in the light of recent CMB missions in both strong and weak dissipative regimes. The tensor to scalar ratio of various inflationary models is found to be consistent with the recent CMB results…
We consider the low energy phenomenology of superstrings. In particular we analyse supersymmetry breaking via gaugino condensate and we compare the phenomenology of the two different approaches to stabilize the dilaton field. We study the…
In the approach of the effective field theory of modified gravity, we derive the second-order action and the equation of motion for tensor perturbations on the flat isotropic cosmological background. This analysis accommodates a wide range…
We present a global embedding of the Fibre inflation model in perturbative large volume scenario (LVS) in which the inflationary potential is induced via a combination of string-loop corrections and higher derivative F$^4$-effects. The…
We review cosmological inflation and its realization in quantum field theory and in string theory. This material is a portion of a book, also entitled "Inflation and String Theory", to be published by Cambridge University Press.
An inflationary stage dominated by a $D$-term avoids the slow-roll problem of inflation in supergravity and may emerge in theories with a non-anomalous or anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry. The most intriguing and commonly invoked possibility…
The string-inspired running vacuum model (StRVM) of inflation is based on a Chern-Simons (CS) gravity effective action, in which the only four-spacetime-derivative-order term is a gravitational anomalous CS Pontryagin density coupled to an…
In type IIB Fibre Inflation models the inflaton is a Kaehler modulus which is kinetically coupled to the corresponding axion. In this setup the curvature of the field space induces tachyonic isocurvature perturbations normal to the…
We provide a simple transfer function that determines the effect of an early matter dominated era on the gravitational wave background and show that a large class of compactifications of superstring theory might be tested by observations of…
We investigate the possibility that spiral inflation can be realized using the near-conifold flux potentials for the complex structure moduli in type IIB string theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau manifold. Using the explicit form of the…
We review the theory of inflation with single and multiple fields paying particular attention to the dynamics of adiabatic and entropy/isocurvature perturbations which provide the primary means of testing inflationary models. We review the…
In hybrid inflationary models, inflation ends by a sudden instability associated with a steep ridge in the potential. Here we argue that this feature can generate a large contribution to the curvature perturbation on observable scales. This…