Related papers: Flat Monodromies and a Moduli Space Size Conjectur…
Higher-order alpha'-corrections are a generic feature of type IIB string compactifications. In KKLT-like models of moduli stabilization they provide a mechanism of breaking the no-scale structure of the volume modulus. We present a model of…
Quantum gravity is expected to impose constraints on the moduli spaces of massless fields that can arise in effective quantum field theories. A recent proposal asserts that the asymptotic volume growth of these spaces is severely…
We study perturbative compactifications of Type II string theory that rely on a fibration structure of the extra dimensions a la SYZ. Non-geometric spaces are obtained by using T-dualities as monodromies. These vacua generically preserve…
An exploratory study of the cosmology of moduli in string theory. Moduli are argued to be natural inflaton fields and lead to a robust inflationary cosmology in which inflation takes place at the top of domain walls. The amplitude of…
We determine all asymptotically flat, supersymmetric and biaxisymmetric soliton and black hole solutions to five dimensional minimal supergravity. In particular, we show that the solution must be a multi-centred solution with a…
Type II orientifolds based on Landau-Ginzburg models are used to describe moduli stabilization for flux compactifications of type II theories from the world-sheet CFT point of view. We show that for certain types of type IIB orientifolds…
It is a fundamental problem in geometry to decide which moduli spaces of polarized algebraic varieties are embedded by their period maps as Zariski open subsets of locally Hermitian symmetric domains. In the present work we prove that the…
We initiate a comprehensive survey of axion inflation in compactifications of type IIB string theory on Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces in toric varieties. For every threefold with $h^{1,1} \le 4$ in the Kreuzer-Skarke database, we compute the…
We make a number of conjectures about the geometry of continuous moduli parameterizing the string landscape. In particular we conjecture that such moduli are always given by expectation value of scalar fields and that moduli spaces with…
We conduct a systematic search for a viable string/M-theory cosmology, focusing on cosmologies that include an era of slow-roll inflation, after which the moduli are stabilized and the Universe is in a state with an acceptably small…
The symmetric spaces that appear as moduli spaces in string theory and supergravity can be decomposed with explicit metrics using parabolic subgroups. The resulting isometry between the original moduli space and this decomposition can be…
We investigate the old problem of determining the exact bulk moduli of generic $\mathrm{SU}(3)$-structure flux backgrounds of type II string theory. Using techniques from generalised geometry, we show that the infinitesimal deformations are…
We extend the linearised solution of Polchinski and Strassler describing the supergravity dual of the N=1* gauge theory. By analysing the equations of motion of type IIB supergravity at cubic order in the mass perturbation parameter, we…
Recent work on four dimensional effective descriptions of the heterotic string has identified the moduli of such systems as being given by kernels of maps between ordinary Dolbeault cohomology groups. The maps involved are defined by the…
Modular inflation is the restriction to two fields of automorphic inflation, a general group based framework for multifield scalar field theories with curved target spaces, which can be parametrized by the comoving curvature perturbation…
Cosmic inflation is one of the most important paradigms in modern cosmology. In its simplest form, inflation is driven by a single inflaton field. However, multi-field inflation has become increasingly attractive because it can solve many…
We consider flux compactifications of type IIB string theory on the mirror of a rigid Calabi-Yau. In special cases, these models are dual to the type IIA flux vacua with runaway direction in flux space. We show that new weak coupling AdS…
We study the scalar potential in supersymmetric (orientifolded) Calabi Yau compactifications of Type IIB theory. We present a new mechanism to stabilize all closed string moduli at leading order in \alpha^{'} by introducing consistently…
We propose a scenario for realizing super-Planckian axion decay constants in Calabi-Yau orientifolds of type IIB string theory, leading to large-field inflation. Our construction is a simple embedding in string theory of the mechanism of…
A moduli space of stable quotients of the rank n trivial sheaf on stable curves is introduced. Over nonsingular curves, the moduli space is Grothendieck's Quot scheme. Over nodal curves, a relative construction is made to keep the torsion…