Related papers: Revisiting arithmetic solutions to the $W=0$ condi…
We revisit the status of hybrid inflation in the light of Planck and recent BICEP2 results, taking care of possible transient violations of the slow-roll conditions as the field passes from the large field to the vacuum dominated phase. The…
We consider flux compactifications of type IIB string theory and F-theory in which the respective superpotentials at large complex structure are dominated by cubic or quartic terms in the complex structure moduli. In this limit, the…
A new approach to vacuum decay in quantum field theory, based on a simple variational formulation in field space using a tunneling potential, is ideally suited to study the effects of gravity on such decays. The method allows to prove in…
We discuss minimally supersymmetric AdS$_3$ flux vacua of massive type IIA supergravity on G2-orientifolds. We find that configurations that are scale-separated can be within finite distance from non scale-separated ones, while both remain…
We study type IIA string theory compactified on Calabi-Yau fourfolds and heterotic string theory compactified on Calabi-Yau threefolds times a two-torus. We derive the resulting effective theories which have two space-time dimensions and…
Supersymmetric flux compactification of F-theory in the geometric phase yields numerous vacua, and provides an ensemble of low-energy effective theories with different symmetry, matter multiplicity and Lagrangian parameters. Theoretical…
We find a new class of metastable de Sitter solutions in compactifications of six-dimensional supergravity motivated by type IIB or heterotic string vacua. Two Fayet-Iliopoulos terms of a local U(1) symmetry are generated by magnetic flux…
We study the vacuum polarization of a massive scalar field $\phi$ with arbitrary coupling to gravity in pointlike global monopole spacetime. Using Schwinger-DeWitt proper time formalism, we calculate the vacuum expectation value…
We consider type IIB flux compactifications on six-dimensional SU(2)-structure manifolds with O5- and O7-planes. These six-dimensional spaces allow not only for F_3 and H_3 fluxes but also for F_1 and F_5 fluxes. We derive the…
Type IIA flux compactifications with O6-planes have been argued from a four dimensional effective theory point of view to admit stable, moduli free solutions. We discuss in detail the ten dimensional description of such vacua and present…
For the minimally coupled scalar field in Einstein's theory of gravitation we look for the space of solutions within the class of closed Friedmann universe models. We prove that D = 1 or D > 1, where D is the (fractal) dimension of the set…
In this note, we present a scenario in which the existence of dS vacua is jeopardized by topological transitions between non-BPS branes and fluxes in type IIB toroidal compactifications. We focus our study on a six-dimensional torus…
We scan the landscape of flux compactifications for the Calabi-Yau manifold $\mathbb{P}^4_{[1,1,1,6,9]}$ with two K\" ahler moduli by varying the value of the flux superpotential $W_0$ over a large range of values. We do not include uplift…
Motivated by the electroweak hierarchy problem, we consider theories with two extra dimensions in which the four-dimensional scalar fields are components of gauge boson in full space, namely the Gauge-Higgs unification framework. We briefly…
We argue that scale-separated AdS$_2$ vacua with at least two preserved supercharges cannot arise from flux compactifications in a regime of computational control. We deduce this by showing that the AdS$_2$ scale is parametrically of the…
In a recent paper \cite{Acharya:2006ia} it was shown that in $M$ theory vacua without fluxes, all moduli are stabilized by the effective potential and a stable hierarchy is generated, consistent with standard gauge unification. This paper…
In this paper we study M-theory compactifications on manifolds of G2 structure. By computing the gravitino mass term in four dimensions we derive the general form for the superpotential which appears in such compactifications and show that…
We investigate gravitational waveforms from the inspiral phase of compact binary systems within the framework of quadratic gravity and map their deviations from general relativity into the parameterized post-Einstein (PPE) formalism to…
We study string compactifications with sixteen supersymmetries. The moduli space for these compactifications becomes quite intricate in lower dimensions, partly because there are many different irreducible components. We focus primarily,…
Much recent attention has focused on theories with large extra compactified dimensions. However, while the phenomenological implications of the volume moduli associated with such compactifications are well understood, relatively little…