Related papers: Challenges for Moduli Stabilization and String Cos…
Black holes in string theory compactified on Calabi-Yau varieties a priori might be expected to have moduli dependent features. For example the entropy of the black hole might be expected to depend on the complex structure of the manifold.…
Supersymmetric heterotic string models, built from a stable holomorphic vector bundle $V$ on a Calabi-Yau threefold $X$, usually come with many vector bundle moduli whose stabilisation is a difficult and complex task. It is therefore of…
This review summarizes the recent developments in topological string theory from the author's perspective, mostly focused on aspects of research in which the author is involved. After a brief overview of the theory, we discuss two aspects…
Exact string solutions are presented, where moduli fields are varying with time. They provide examples where a dynamical change of the topology of space is occurring. Some other solutions give cosmological examples where some dimensions are…
This thesis is concerned with the geometry of toroidal orbifolds and their applications in string theory. By resolving the orbifold singularities via blow-ups, one arrives at a smooth Calabi-Yau manifold. The systematic method to do so is…
Compactifications of the heterotic string with NS flux normally require non Calabi-Yau internal spaces which are complex but no longer K\"ahler. We point out that this conclusion rests on the assumption of a maximally symmetric…
Cosmological constraints on moduli, whose coupling to matter is stronger than Planck mass suppressed coupling, are derived. In particular, moduli are considered to be produced by oscillating loops of cosmic strings and constraints are…
While axions seem ubiquitous in critical string theories, whether they might survive in any string theoretic description of nature is a difficult question. With some mild assumptions, one can frame the issues in the case that there is an…
We show how non-trivial form fields can induce an effective potential for the dilaton and metric moduli in compactifications of type II string theory and M-theory. For particular configurations, the potential can have a stable minimum. In…
There are at least two serious moduli problems in string cosmology. The first is the possibility that moduli dominate the energy density at the time of nucleosynthesis. The second is that they may not find their minima all together. After…
Finding a consistent way to stabilize the various moduli fields which generically appear in string theory compactifications, is essential if string theory is to make contact with the physics we see around us. We present, in this paper, a…
While Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces in toric ambient spaces provide a huge number of examples, theoretical considerations as well as applications to string phenomenology often suggest a broader perspective. With even the question of finiteness…
The possibility of dynamical stabilization of an internal space is investigated for a multidimensional cosmological model with minimal coupled scalar field as inflaton. It is shown that a successful dynamical compactification crucially…
We propose a simple but effective mechanism to realize an inflationary early universe consistent with the observed WMAP, Planck and/or BICEP2 data, which would be incorporated in various supersymmetric models of elementary particles…
String theory abounds with light scalar fields (the dilaton and various moduli) which create a host of observational problems, and notably some serious cosmological difficulties similar to the ones associated with the Polonyi field in the…
We critically review the role of cosmological moduli in determining the post-inflationary history of the universe. Moduli are ubiquitous in string and M-theory constructions of beyond the Standard Model physics, where they parametrize the…
We study the stabilization of a twisted modulus in Type IIB flux compactifications on a mirror of the rigid Calabi-Yau threefold. By analyzing the effective action of twisted and untwisted moduli, we find that three-form fluxes satisfying…
It is tempting to inflate along one of the many flat directions that arise in supersymmetric theories. The required flatness of the potential to obtain sufficient inflation and to not overproduce density fluctuations occurs naturally.…
We study the number of flux vacua for type IIB string theory on an orientifold of the Calabi-Yau expressed as a hypersurface in WCP^4[1,1,2,2,6] by evaluating a suitable integral over the complex-structure moduli space as per the conjecture…
This article is devoted to an overview of superstring perturbation theory from the point of view of super Riemann surfaces. We aim to elucidate some of the subtleties of superstring perturbation that caused difficulty in the early…