Related papers: Conifold dynamics and axion monodromies
Recent models of axion monodromy inflation in string theory link the inflationary potential and the moduli stabilization potential. Realistic inflationary models require mechanisms to moderately suppress the inflaton mass with respect to…
This brief article reviews a recently proposed scenario of moduli stabilization constructed in the vicinity of a conifold locus in the complex structure moduli space. We discuss typical features of moduli stabilization due to the…
We study moduli stabilization for type IIB orientifolds compactified on Calabi-Yau threefolds in the region close to conifold singularities in the complex structure moduli space. The form of the periods implies new phenomena like…
Flux couplings to string theory axions yield super-Planckian field ranges along which the axion potential energy grows. At the same time, other aspects of the physics remain essentially unchanged along these large displacements, respecting…
We describe the construction of string theory models with semirealistic spectrum in a sector of (anti) D3-branes located at an orbifold singularity at the bottom of a highly warped throat geometry, which is a generalisation of the…
We investigate how super-Planckian axions can arise when type IIB 3-form flux is used to restrict a two-axion field space to a one-dimensional winding trajectory. If one does not attempt to address notoriously complicated issues like Kahler…
We revisit moduli stabilisation for type IIB flux compactifications that include a warped throat region corresponding to a warped deformed conifold, with an anti-D3-brane sitting at its tip. The warping induces a coupling between the…
We analyse the cosmological implications of brane-antibrane systems in string-theoretic orbifold and orientifold models. In a class of realistic models, consistency conditions require branes and antibranes to be stuck at different fixed…
Tree-level moduli stabilization via geometric and non-geometric fluxes in type IIB orientifolds on Calabi-Yau manifolds is investigated. The focus is on stable non-supersymmetric minima, where all moduli are fixed except for some massless…
Natural inflation relies on the existence of an axion decay constant which is super-Planckian. In string theory only sub-Planckian axion decay constants have been found in any controlled regime. However in field theory it is possible to…
We construct a large class of non-supersymmetric AdS-like throat geometries in string theory by taking non-supersymmetric orbifolds of supersymmetric backgrounds. The scale of SUSY breaking is the AdS radius, and the dual field theory has…
Conifold geometries have recieved a lot of attention in string theory and string-inspired cosmology recently, in particular the Klebanov-Strassler background that is known as the "warped throat". It is our intention in this article to give…
We illustrate a framework for constructing models of chaotic inflation where the inflaton is the position of a D3 brane along the universal cover of a string compactification. In our scenario, a brane rolls many times around a non-trivial…
Wrapped branes in string compactifications introduce a monodromy that extends the field range of individual closed-string axions to beyond the Planck scale. Furthermore, approximate shift symmetries of the system naturally control…
String theory realisations of the QCD axion are often said to belong to the anthropic window where the decay constant is around the GUT scale and the initial misalignment angle has to be tuned close to zero. In this paper we revisit this…
We construct a model of quintessence in string theory based on the idea of axion monodromy as discussed by McAllister, Silverstein and Westphal arXiv:0808.0706. In the model, the quintessence field is an axion whose shift symmetry is broken…
We investigate the embedding of brane inflation into stable compactifications of string theory. At first sight a warped compactification geometry seems to produce a naturally flat inflaton potential, evading one well-known difficulty of…
This article discusses model-building scenarios including anti-D3-/D7-branes, in which supersymmetry is broken spontaneously, despite having no scale at which sparticles appear and standard supersymmetry is restored. If the branes are…
We investigate a new mechanism for realizing slow roll inflation in string theory, based on the dynamics of p anti-D3 branes in a class of mildly warped flux compactifications. Attracted to the bottom of a warped conifold throat, the…
We continue the investigation of F-term axion monodromy inflation in string theory, while seriously taking the issue of moduli stabilization into account. For a number of closed and open string models, we show that they suffer from serious…