Related papers: String loop origin for dark radiation and superhea…
Reheating in string compactifications is generically driven by the decay of the lightest modulus which produces Standard Model particles, dark matter and light hidden sector degrees of freedom that behave as dark radiation. This common…
We examine the issue of dark radiation (DR) from string moduli decay into axion-like particles (ALPs). In KKLT-type models of moduli stabilization, the axionlike phases of moduli fields are expected to decouple whilst in LVS-type moduli…
String theory has been claimed to give rise to natural fuzzy dark matter candidates in the form of ultralight axions. In this paper we revisit this claim by a detailed study of how moduli stabilisation affects the masses and decay constants…
We study the spectrum, couplings and cosmological and astrophysical implications of the moduli fields for the class of Calabi-Yau IIB string compactifications for which moduli stabilisation leads to an exponentially large volume V ~ 10^{15}…
We propose heavy axions as a natural superheavy dark matter candidate in string theory, with the relic density of dark matter originating in quantum fluctuations during cosmic inflation. String Theory is well known for the possibility of…
This article represents the author's PhD thesis which is focused on moduli stabilisation in type IIB Calabi-Yau flux compactifications and its applications to cosmology. I derive the topological conditions on an arbitrary Calabi-Yau to give…
In this talk I will discuss the role of finite temperature quantum corrections in string cosmology and show that they can lead to a stabilization mechanism for the volume moduli. I will show that from the higher dimensional perspective this…
The generic expectation in string/supergravity models is that there are multiple moduli fields with masses of the order of the supersymmetry breaking scale. We study the cosmology that arises as a result of vacuum misalignment of these…
The r\^ole of string loop corrections on the existence of de Sitter vacua and the moduli stabilization problem is examined in type IIB effective theories. The fundamental building blocks are a minimum of three intersecting D7 brane stacks,…
Cosmological moduli generically come to dominate the energy density of the early universe, and thereby trigger an early matter dominated era. Such non-standard cosmological histories are expected to have profound effects on the evolution…
We review how axion-like particles (ALPs) naturally emerge in the low-energy effective field theory of string compactifications. We focus on the study of their mass spectrum and couplings, stressing that they depend on the mechanism used to…
Dark radiation is a compelling extension to $\Lambda$CDM: current experimental results hint at $\Delta N_{\rm eff} \gtrsim 0.5$, which is increased to $\Delta N_{\rm eff} \simeq 1$ if the recent BICEP2 results are included. In recent years…
In large volume models reheating is driven by the decays of the volume modulus to the visible sector, while the decays to its axion partners result in dark radiation. In this article we discuss the impact of loop corrections on the only…
The string/$M$ theory Axiverse -- a plethora of very light Axion Like Particles (ALPs) with a vast range of masses -- is arguably a generic prediction of string/$M$ theory. String/$M$ theory also tends to predict that the early Universe is…
The subject of this thesis is cosmological implications of string compactifications understood in a broad sense. In the first half of the thesis, we will begin by reviewing the four-dimensional description of the tree-level perturbative…
We study the phenomenology of superheavy decaying dark matter with mass around $10^{10}$ GeV which can arise in the low-energy limit of string compactifications. Generic features of string theory setups (such as high scale supersymmetry…
We perform an extensive analysis of the statistics of axion masses and interactions in compactifications of type IIB string theory, and we show that black hole superradiance excludes some regions of Calabi-Yau moduli space. Regardless of…
We have studied numerically the evolution and decay of axion strings. These global defects decay mainly by axion emission and thus contribute to the cosmological axion density. The relative importance of this source relative to misalignment…
We study string loop corrections to the gravity kinetic terms in type IIB compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds or their orbifold limits, in the presence of $D7$-branes and orientifold planes. We show that they exhibit in general a…
Within two specific string cosmology scenarios --differing in the way the pre- and post-big bang phases are joined-- we compute the size and spectral slope of various types of cosmologically amplified quantum fluctuations that arise in…