Related papers: Axion Inflation and Affleck-Dine Baryogenesis
In this work, we present a unified theoretical framework that simultaneously addresses some of the most intriguing puzzles in particle physics and cosmology, namely the origins of neutrino mass, baryon asymmetry, and cosmic inflation. In…
The MSSM has flat directions in its scalar potential, along which it is natural for Bose condensates of squarks to form in the early Universe. A baryon asymmetry can be induced in these condensates via Affleck-Dine baryogenesis. The…
We investigate the embedding of brane inflation into stable compactifications of string theory. At first sight a warped compactification geometry seems to produce a naturally flat inflaton potential, evading one well-known difficulty of…
We analyse the cosmological implications of brane-antibrane systems in string-theoretic orbifold and orientifold models. In a class of realistic models, consistency conditions require branes and antibranes to be stuck at different fixed…
Baryogenesis from the coherent production of a scalar condensate along a flat direction of the supersymmetric extension of the standard model (Affleck-Dine mechanism) is investigated. Two important effects are emphasized. First,…
We study a baryogenesis mechanism operating in the context of hyperextended inflation and making use of a coupling between the scalar field and a standard model global current, such as B or B-L. The method is efficient at temperatures at…
The most important criteria for a successful inflation are to explain the observed temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation, and exiting inflation in a vacuum where it can excite the Standard Model quarks and…
The simplest explanation for early time acceleration (inflation) and the late time acceleration indicated by recent data is that they have a common origin. We investigate another generic cosmological implication of this possiblity, that the…
The current cosmological constraints on a dark matter axion are reviewed. We describe the basic mechanisms by which axions are created in the early universe, both in the standard thermal scenario in which axion strings form and in…
We study the non-linear dynamics of axion inflation, capturing for the first time the inhomogeneity and full dynamical range during strong backreaction, till the end of inflation. Accounting for inhomogeneous effects leads to a number of…
We describe a scenario for inflation in the framework of non-critical string theory, which does not employ an inflaton field. There is an exponential expansion of the volume of the Universe, induced by enormous entropy production in the…
We investigate multi-field inflationary scenarios with fields that drop out of the model in a staggered fashion. This feature is natural in certain multi-field inflationary setups within string theory; for instance, it can manifest itself…
The dynamics at the end of inflation can generate an asymmetry between particles and anti-particles of the inflaton field. This asymmetry can be transferred to baryons via decays, generating a baryon asymmetry in our Universe. We explore…
Axions constitute a well-motivated dark matter candidate, and if PQ symmetry breaking occurred after inflation, it should be possible to make a clean prediction for the relation between the axion mass and the axion dark matter density. We…
The inflaton potential in four-dimensional theory is rather arbitrary, and fine-tuning is required generically. By contrast, inflation in the brane world scenario has the interesting feature that the inflaton potential is motivated from…
Axions play a central role in many realizations of large field models of inflation and in recent alternative mechanisms for generating primordial tensor modes in small field models. If these axions couple to gauge fields, the coupling…
We investigate axion-inflation baryogenesis models, embedded into U(1) gauge symmetric extensions of the Standard Model (SM), in which the new gauge field couples to the pseudo-scalar inflaton via the Chern-Simons coupling. The motion of…
Gauge-flation, non-Abelian gauge field inflation, which was introduced in arXiv:1102.1513 and analyzed more thoroughly in arXiv:1102.1932, is a model of inflation driven by non-Abelian gauge fields minimally coupled to Einstein gravity. In…
Non-supersymmetric brane world scenarios in string theory display perturbative instabilities that usually involve run-away potentials for scalar moduli fields. We investigate in the framework of intersecting brane worlds whether the leading…
We study the dynamics of axion-like fields in F-theory and suggest that they can serve as inflatons in models of natural inflation. The axions arise from harmonic three-forms on the F-theory compactification space and parameterize a complex…