Related papers: On Axion Reheating in the String Landscape
On compactification to six spacetime dimensions, the fundamental heterotic string admits as a soliton a dual string whose effective worldsheet action couples to the background fields of the dual formulation of six-dimensional supergravity.…
We review recent progress in string cosmology, where string dualities are applied so as to obtain complete cosmological evolutions, free of any essential singularities. Two classes of models are analyzed. The first class consists of string…
Precision gauge coupling unification is one of the primary quantitative successes of low energy or split supersymmetry. Preserving this success puts severe restrictions on possible matter and gauge sectors that might appear at…
Generic classes of string compactifications include ``brane throats'' emanating from the compact dimensions and separated by effective potential barriers raised by the background gravitational fields. The interaction of observers inside…
A class of non-supersymmetric string backgrounds can be constructed using twists that involve space-time fermion parity. We propose a non-perturbative definition of string theory in these backgrounds via gauge theories with supersymmetry…
In this paper we propose a two-field model of warm inflation motivated from a heterotic string construction. The model contains an axion and a dilaton-like field. We show that while warm inflation can take place in the axion-field…
The presence of axion strings in the Universe after recombination can leave an imprint on the polarization pattern of the cosmic microwave background radiation through the phenomenon of axion-string-induced birefringence via the hyperlight…
We introduce a class of unified supersymmetric axion theories with unified and PQ symmetries broken by the same set of fields at a scale $\sim 2\times 10^{16}$ GeV. A typical domain wall number of order 30 leads to an axion decay constant…
We derive the basic correlation functions of twist fields coming from arbitrary twisted sectors in symmetric $Z_N$ orbifold conformal field theories, keeping all the admissible marginal perturbations, in particular those corresponding to…
We consider the phenomenological implications of a class of compactified string theories which naturally reproduces the flavour multiplet structure of the Standard Model. The implications for gauge unification depends on which of three…
We study cosmological constraints on dark pure Yang-Mills sectors. Dark glueballs are overproduced for large regions of ultraviolet parameter space. The problem may be alleviated in two ways: via a large preferential reheating into the…
We investigate the Hagedorn transitions of string networks with Y-junctions as may occur, for example, with (p,q) cosmic superstrings. In a simplified model with three different types of string, the partition function reduces to three…
We illustrate, taking a top-down point of view, how axions and other very weakly interacting sub-eV particles (WISPs) arise in the course of compactification of the extra spatial dimensions in string/M-theory.
A scenario for the generation of the baryon asymmetry in the early Universe is proposed in which cosmic string loops, predicted by theories where the baryon and/or lepton numbers are gauged symmetries, collapse during the friction dominated…
We examine the possibility that the strong CP problem is solved by string-theoretic axions in strong-coupling limit of the E_8 x E_8 heterotic string theory (M-theory). We first discuss some generic features of gauge kinetic functions in…
This paper revisits the problem of the string decay contribution to the axion cosmological energy density. We show that this contribution is proportional to the average relative increase when axion strings decay of a certain quantity…
Dark matter axions form a rethermalizing Bose-Einstein condensate. This provides an opportunity to distinguish axions from other forms of dark matter on observational grounds. I show that if the dark matter is axions, tidal torque theory…
We review recent progress in string model building in both early and late time cosmology. We describe the main theoretical and phenomenological features of an entire class of inflationary models where inflation is driven by a type IIB…
Asymmetric symmetry breaking models dynamically break the G X G gauge symmetries of mirror models to distinct subgroups in the two sectors. The coincidental abundances of visible and dark matter, $\Omega_{DM} \simeq 5\Omega_{VM}$, motivates…
Inflationary reheating via resonant production of non-minimally coupled scalar particles with only gravitational coupling is shown to be extremely strong, exhibiting a negative coupling instability for $\xi < 0$ and a wide resonance decay…