Related papers: "Invisible" axion rolling through the QCD phase tr…
Composite axions offer a scenario where the axion emerges as a pion-like state, avoiding fine-tuning of elementary scalars and ameliorating the axion quality problem. Despite these advantages, their post-inflationary cosmology remains…
Extra dimension provides an attractive way to break symmetry by boundary conditions which can be useful to construct a natural grand unified theory avoiding the doublet-triplet splitting problem and the proton decay problem. It can provide…
Recently, extra dimensional SUSY GUT models have been proposed in which compactification of the extra dimension(s) leads to a breakdown of the gauge symmetry and/or supersymmetry. We examine a particular class of higher-dimensional models…
Axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) are a prominent dark matter candidate, drawing motivation in part from the axiverse of string theory. Axion-like particles can also arise as composite degrees of freedom of a dark sector, for example,…
We present a brief overview of axion models associated to anomalous abelian (gauge) symmetries, discussing their main phenomenological features. Among these, the mechanism of vacuum misalignment introduced at the QCD and at the electroweak…
We argue that the QCD axion can arise from many aligned axions with decay constants much smaller than the conventional axion window. If the typical decay constant is of {\cal O}{(100)} GeV to 1 TeV, one or more of the axions or saxions may…
We review the main results of our investigations motivated by the tadpole potentials of ten-dimensional strings with broken supersymmetry. While these are at best partial indications, it is hard to resist the feeling that they do capture…
This thesis analyses gauged supergravities in various dimensions and their possible origin from compactifications of string theory. In the effective description the fluxes appear in the theory as deformation parameters generating a…
We present a novel realization of axion kinetic misalignment, triggered by a Hubble-induced phase transition during a post-inflationary stiff (kination) era. A negative Ricci scalar flips the sign of a non-minimally coupled mass term for a…
We review recent progress in embedding the supersymmetric standard model into string theory. We discuss how, with the incorporation of certain aspects of grand unification, a search strategy can be developed that allows to efficiently find…
We study a class of four-dimensional N=1 heterotic string theories which have nontrivial quantum dynamics arising from asymptotically free gauge groups. These models are obtained by orbifolding 4d N=2 heterotic/type II dual pairs by…
We present models of flavorful supersymmetry in higher dimensions. The Higgs fields and the supersymmetry breaking field are localized in the same place in the extra dimension(s). The Yukawa couplings and operators generating the…
The QCD axion fails to solve the strong CP problem unless all explicit PQ violating, Planck-suppressed, dimension n<10 operators are forbidden or have exponentially small coefficients. We show that all theories with a QCD axion contain an…
We construct a flavor model in an anti-SU(5) GUT with a tetrahedral symmetry $A_4$. We choose a basis where $Q_{text{em}}=-\frac13$ quarks and charged leptons are already mass eigenstates. This choice is possible from the $A_4$ symmetry.…
We investigate the conditions for a QCD axion to coexist with stabilised moduli in string compactifications. We show how the simplest approaches to moduli stabilisation give unacceptably large masses to the axions. We observe that solving…
We argue that compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds with vanishing Euler number yield effective four dimensional theories exhibiting (spontaneously broken) N=4 supersymmetry. To this end, we derive the low-energy effective action for…
The supersymmetry breaking parameters and the resulting supersymmetric particle spectrum are studied in orbifold compactifications of string theory under the assumption that unification of gauge coupling constants at about $10^{16}$ GeV is…
Treating hadronic flavor symmetries with quantum algebras U_q(su_n) leads to interesting consequences such as: new mass sum rules for hadrons 1^-, (1/2)^+, (3/2)^+ of improved accuracy; possibility to label different flavors topologically -…
We implement the scenario of early relaxation of the axion via a high scale confinement within $SU(5)$ grand unified theory and study an epoch of strong QCD in inflationary cosmology. We consider scenarios in which, during inflation, the…
We consider a geometric zero-radius limit for strings on $AdS_5\times S^5$, where the anti-de Sitter hyperboloid becomes the projective lightcone. In this limit the fifth dimension becomes nondynamical, yielding a different "holographic"…