Related papers: Supercritical String Cosmology drains the Swamplan…
We show that stable local cosmic strings are a generic prediction of supersymmetric models where supersymmetry is broken at scales within a few orders of magnitude of the weak scale and is fed down to the observable sector by gauge…
The cosmological constant problem is a failure of naturalness and suggests that a fine-tuning mechanism is at work, which may also address the hierarchy problem. An example -- supported by Weinberg's successful prediction of the…
We show that if there is a realistic 4-d string, the dilaton and moduli supermultiplets will generically acquire a small mass O(m_{3/2}), providing the only vacuum-independent evidence of low-energy physics in string theory beyond the…
There are two important examples of physical systems which violate the strong energy condition : Universes (like, it would seem, our own) with a positive cosmological constant, and wormholes. We suggest that a positive cosmological constant…
Flat directions are a generic feature of the scalar potential in supersymmetric gauge field theories. They can arise, for example, from D-terms associated with an extra abelian gauge symmetry. Even when supersymmetry is broken softly, there…
In the context of a cosmological string model describing the propagation of strings in a time-dependent Robertson-Walker background space-time, we show that the asymptotic acceleration of the Universe can be identified with the square of…
It has recently been conjectured that string theory does not admit de Sitter vacua, and that quintessence explains the current epoch of accelerated cosmic expansion. A proposed, key prediction of this scenario is time-varying couplings in…
An accelerating Universe can be accommodated naturally within non-critical string theory, in which scattering is described by a superscattering matrix \$ that does not factorize as a product of $S$- and $S^\dagger$-matrix elements and time…
The idea that spacetime has to be replaced by Clifford space (C-space) is explored. Quantum field theory (QFT) and string theory are generalized to C-space. It is shown how one can solve the cosmological constant problem and formulate…
We prove the conditions under which scaling cosmologies are inevitable late-time attractors of multi-field multi-exponential potentials, independently of initial conditions. The advantage of such scaling cosmologies is that the time…
We consider the dynamics of the open string tachyon condensation in a framework of the cubic fermionic String Field Theory including a non-minimal coupling with closed string massless modes, the graviton and the dilaton. Coupling of the…
A connection between non-perturbative formulations of quantum gravity and perturbative string theory is exhibited, based on a formulation of the non-perturbative dynamics due to Markopoulou. In this formulation the dynamics of spin network…
Data on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are discriminating between different models of inflation, disfavoring simple monomial potentials whilst being consistent with models whose predictions resemble those of the Starobinsky $R + R^2$…
We show that $4$-dimensional Robertson-Walker spacetimes can be constructed for which all of the beta functions vanish to leading order, yielding consistent string theory without extra dimensions. We find that there is a unique static…
We propose a scenario with string theory in the deep ultraviolet, an intermediate asymptotically safe scaling regime for gravity and matter, and the Standard Model in the infrared. This could provide a new perspective to tackle challenges…
It has been recently proposed that the interpretation of gravity as an emergent, entropic force might have nontrivial implications to cosmology. Here two approaches are investigated: in one, the Friedman equation receives entropic…
This paper extends the recent investigation of the string theory landscape in hep-th/0605266, where it was found that the decay rate of dS vacua to a collapsing space with a negative vacuum energy can be quite large. The parts of space that…
In this paper, we investigate the strong cosmic censorship conjecture (SCC) for charged black holes in the de Sitter space by considering the weak gravity conjecture (WGC). Using analytical methods, we find that the SCC is preserved for…
In recent times, a considerable effort has been dedicated to identify certain conditions -- the so-called swampland conjectures -- with an eye on identifying effective theories which have no consistent UV-completions in string theory. In…
It has recently been conjectured that string theory does not admit de Sitter critical points. This note points out that in several cases, including KKLT or racetrack models, this statement is equivalent to the absence of supersymmetric…