Related papers: Aligned Natural Inflation in the Large Volume Scen…
In models of natural inflation, the inflaton is an axion-like particle. Unfortunately, axion potentials in UV-complete theories appear to be too steep to drive inflation. We show that, even for a steep potential, natural inflation can occur…
We point out three correlated predictions of the axion monodromy inflation model: large amplitude of gravitational waves, suppression of power on horizon scales and on scales relevant for the formation of dwarf galaxies. While these…
Attempts to connect string theory with astrophysical observation are hampered by a jargon barrier, where an intimidating profusion of orientifolds, Kahler potentials, etc. dissuades cosmologists from attempting to work out the astrophysical…
Inflationary models whose vacuum energy arises from a D-term are believed not to suffer from the supergravity eta problem of F-term inflation. That is, D-term models have the desirable property that the inflaton mass can naturally remain…
We attempt to incorporate inflation into a string theory realization of the chameleon mechanism. Previously, it was found that the volume modulus, stabilized by the supersymmetric potential used by Kachru, Kallosh, Linde and Trivedi (KKLT)…
This is a short review of string cosmology. We wish to connect string-scale physics as closely as possible to observables accessible to current or near-future experiments. Our possible best hope to do so is a description of inflation in…
We present a new mechanism to relax the initial misalignment angle of the QCD axion and raise the cosmological bound on the axion decay constant. The QCD axion receives a contribution from small UV instantons during inflation, which raises…
Ultra-light axions ($m_a\lesssim 10^{-18}$eV), motivated by string theory, can be a powerful probe of the energy scale of inflation. In contrast to heavier axions the isocurvature modes in the ultra-light axions can coexist with observable…
We point out some of the outstanding challenges for embedding inflationary cosmology within string theory studying the process of reheating for models where the inflaton is a closed string mode parameterising the size of an internal cycle…
In this lecture I will review the present status of inflation within string-based brane-world scenarios. The idea is to start from a supersymmetric configuration with two parallel static Dp-branes, and slightly break the supersymmetry…
We consider gravitational wave production during inflation in type IIB string theory, and the possibility of observable gravitational waves in small field inflation. We show that the gauge field excitations on a set of coincident D7 branes,…
We demonstrate that "natural inflation", also known as "axion inflation", can be compatible with Planck 2018 measurements of the cosmic microwave background, while predicting an exponentially small tensor-to-scalar ratio, e.g., $r\sim…
If inflation scale is high, light scalars acquire large quantum fluctuations during inflation.If sufficiently long-lived, they will give rise to CDM isocurvature perturbations, which are highly constrained by the Planck data. Focusing on…
We continue the development of axion monodromy inflation, focussing in particular on the backreaction of complex structure moduli. In our setting, the shift symmetry comes from a partial large complex structure limit of the underlying type…
We study a string theory inspired model for hybrid inflation in the context of a brane-antibrane system partially compactified on a compact submanifold of (a caricature of) a Calabi-Yau manifold. The interbrane distance acts as the…
We analyze the interplay between K\"ahler moduli stabilization and chaotic inflation in supergravity. While heavy moduli decouple from inflation in the supersymmetric limit, supersymmetry breaking generically introduces non-decoupling…
Based on our previous work, we constructed a phenomenological model of inflation with the higher derivative axion field in the light of recent cosmological expertiments BICEP2 and PLANCK. In order to achieve observed values for the…
The perturbative LARGE volume scenario (LVS) is a promising moduli stabilisation scheme in which the overall volume modulus of the compactifying Calabi-Yau (CY) threefold is dynamically stabilised to exponentially large values via using…
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 develop a model of eternal topological inflation using a racetrack potential within the context of type IIB string theory with KKLT volume stabilization. The inflaton field is the imaginary part of the K\"ahler structure modulus, which…