Related papers: Vacuum Selection on Axionic Landscapes
We consider the statistical properties of vacua and inflationary trajectories associated with a random multifield potential. Our underlying motivation is the string landscape, but our calculations apply to general potentials. Using random…
We investigate vacuum statistics and stability in random axionic landscapes. For this purpose we developed an algorithm for a quick evaluation of the tunneling action, which in most cases is accurate within 10%. We find that stability of a…
In BP models with hundreds of fluxes, we compute the effects of cosmological dynamics on the probability distribution of landscape vacua. Starting from generic initial conditions, we find that most fluxes are dynamically driven into a…
An anthropic understanding of the cosmological constant requires that the vacuum energy at late time scans from one patch of the universe to another. If the vacuum energy during inflation also scans, the various patches of the universe…
Based on random matrix theory, we compute the likelihood of saddles and minima in a class of random potentials that are softly bounded from above and below, as required for the validity of low energy effective theories. Imposing this bound…
A wide variety of vacua, and their cosmological realization, may provide an explanation for the apparently anthropic choices of some parameters of particle physics and cosmology. If the probability on various parameters is weighted by…
Multiple axions form a landscape in the presence of various shift symmetry breaking terms. Eternal inflation populates the axion landscape, continuously creating new universes by bubble nucleation. Slow-roll inflation takes place after the…
We study some aspects of fine tuning in inflationary scenarios within string theory flux compactifications and, in particular, in models of accidental inflation. We investigate the possibility that the apparent fine-tuning of the low energy…
Random, multifield functions can set generic expectations for landscape-style cosmologies. We consider the inflationary implications of a landscape defined by a Gaussian random function, which is perhaps the simplest such scenario. Many key…
We propose a landscape of many axions, where the axion potential receives various contributions from shift symmetry breaking effects. We show that the existence of the axion with a super-Planckian decay constant is very common in the axion…
We examine a wide class of multi-field inflationary models based on fields that decay or stabilize during inflation in a staggered fashion. The fields driving assisted inflation are on flat, short stretches, before they encounter a sharp…
We investigate slow-roll inflation in a multi-field random Gaussian landscape. The landscape is assumed to be small-field, with a correlation length much smaller than the Planck scale. Inflation then typically occurs in small patches of the…
Landscape cosmology posits the existence of a convoluted, multidimensional, scalar potential -- the "landscape" -- with vast numbers of metastable minima. Random matrices and random functions in many dimensions provide toy models of the…
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…
A striking feature of our universe is its near criticality. The cosmological constant and weak hierarchy problems, as well as the metastability of the electroweak vacuum, can all be understood as problems of criticality. This suggests a…
We develop a stochastic description of small-field inflationary histories with a graceful exit in a random potential whose Hessian is a Gaussian random matrix as a model of the unstructured part of the string landscape. The dynamical…
We show that the geometry of cutoffs on eternal inflation strongly constrains predictions for the timescales of vacuum domination, curvature domination, and observation. We consider three measure proposals: the causal patch, the fat…
I show that the problem of realizing inflation in theories with random potentials of a limited number of fields can be solved, and agreement with the observational data can be naturally achieved if at least one of these fields has a…
We study the cosmology of complex multi-axion theories. With O(100) fields and GUT scale energies these theories contain a vast number of vacua, inflationary trajectories and a natural dark matter candidate. We demonstrate that the vacua…
In inflationary models, the predicted amplitude of primordial density perturbations Q is much larger than the observed value (~10^{-5}) for natural choices of parameters. To explain the requisite exponential fine-tuning, anthropic selection…