Related papers: Vacuum Selection on Axionic Landscapes
While moving down the potential on its classical slow roll trajectory, the inflaton field is subject to quantum jumps, which take it up or down the potential at random. In "stochastic inflation", the impact of these quantum jumps is modeled…
Recently we introduced an inflationary setup in which the inflaton fields are matrix valued scalar fields with a generic quartic potential, M-flation. In this work we study the landscape of various inflationary models arising from…
For the minimal QCD axion model it is generally believed that overproduction of dark matter constrains the axion mass to be above a certain threshold, or at least that the initial misalignment angle must be tuned if the mass is below that…
We search for effective axions with super-Planckian decay constants in type IIB string models. We argue that such axions can be realised as long winding trajectories in complex-structure moduli space by an appropriate flux choice. Our main…
The much-discussed swampland conjectures suggest significant constraints on the properties of string theory landscape and on the nature of the multiverse that this landscape can support. The conjectures are especially constraining for…
We explore the dynamics of assisted quintessence, where more than one scalar field is present with the same potential. For potentials with tracking solutions, the fields naturally approach the same values; in the context of inflation this…
There are two main approaches to non-equlibrium statistical mechanics: one using stochastic processes and the other using dynamical systems. To model the dynamics during inflation one usually adopts a stochastic description, which is known…
Aims To propose and analyze a general, dynamic, process-oriented theory of the area of distribution. Methods The area of distribution is modelled by combining (by multiplication) three matrices: one matrix represents movements, another…
We consider an inflationary scenario where the energy scale of inflation stems from gauge theory dynamics. We point out its generic implications on vacuum selection of our universe, in particular, on determination of spacetime symmetries…
We show that the cosmological abundance of string axions is much smaller than naive estimates if the Hubble scale of inflation, $H_{\rm inf}$, is sufficiently low (but can still be much higher than the axion masses) and if the inflation…
An important unsolved problem that affects practically all attempts to connect string theory to cosmology and phenomenology is how to distinguish effective field theories belonging to the string landscape from those that are not consistent…
Chain Inflation is an alternative to slow roll inflation in which the universe undergoes a series of transitions between different vacua. The density perturbations (studied in this paper) are seeded by the probabilistic nature of tunneling…
In a previous paper we found that in the context of the string theory ``discretuum'' proposed by Bousso and Polchinski, the cosmological constant probability distribution varies wildly. However, the successful anthropic predictions of the…
If the gradient of a probability distribution on a landscape of vacua aligns with the variation of some fundamental parameter, the parameter may be likely to take some non-generic value. Such non-generic values can be associated to critical…
During eternal inflation, a landscape of vacua can be populated by the nucleation of bubbles. These bubbles inevitably collide, and collisions sometimes displace the field into a new minimum in a process known as a classical transition. In…
We consider how the swampland criteria might be applied to models in which scalar fields have nontrivial kinetic terms, particularly in the context of $P(\phi,X)$ theories, popularly used in approaches to inflation, to its alternatives, and…
In Chain Inflation the universe tunnels along a series of false vacua of ever-decreasing energy. The main goal of this paper is to embed Chain Inflation in high energy fundamental physics. We begin by illustrating a simple effective…
The dynamics of hybrid models is usually approximated by the evolution of a scalar field slowly rolling along a nearly flat valley. Inflation ends with a waterfall phase, due to a tachyonic instability. This final phase is usually assumed…
Diffusion in a multidimensional energy surface with minima and barriers is a problem of importance in statistical mechanics and also has wide applications, such as protein folding. To understand it in such a system, we carry out theory and…
Because of their quantum fluctuations, axion fields had a chance to experience field excursions traversing many minima of their potentials during inflation. We study this situation by analyzing the dynamics of an axion-spectator field…