Related papers: String loop origin for dark radiation and superhea…
Recent cosmological measurements favour additional relativistic energy density beyond the one provided by the three active neutrinos and photons of the Standard Model (SM). This is often referred to as "dark radiation", suggesting the need…
The supersymmetric particle spectrum is calculated in type I string theories formulated as orientifold compactifications of type IIB string theory. A string scale at an intermediate value of $10^{11}-10^{12}$ GeV is assumed and extra…
In this talk, I showcase models for fuzzy axion dark matter within the framework of type IIB string theory, focusing on axions originating from the Ramond-Ramond four-form in compactifications on Calabi-Yau orientifold hypersurfaces. These…
We review searches for closed string axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) in IIB string flux compactifications. For natural values of the background fluxes and TeV scale gravitino mass, the moduli stabilisation mechanism of the LARGE…
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…
If nature is described by string theory, and if the compactification radius is large (as suggested by the unification of couplings), then the theory is in a regime best described by the low energy limit of $M$-theory. We discuss some…
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…
Non-thermal cosmological histories are capable of greatly increasing the available parameter space of different particle physics dark matter (DM) models and are well-motivated by the ubiquity of late-decaying gravitationally coupled scalars…
We investigate the possibility of a dark energy universe emerging from an action with higher-order string loop corrections to Einstein gravity in the presence of a massless dilaton. These curvature corrections (up to $R^4$ order) are…
Explicit string models which can realize inflation and low-energy supersymmetry are notoriously difficult to achieve. Given that sequestering requires very specific configurations, supersymmetric particles are in general expected to be very…
It has recently been shown that if we take into account a class of higher derivative corrections to the effective action of heterotic string theory, the entropy of the black hole solution representing elementary string states correctly…
We study cosmic strings in the complex symmetron model, a scalar-tensor theory with a spontaneously broken local $U(1)$ symmetry in low matter density regions. Using numerical simulations, we show that these strings preferentially attach to…
An interesting result in particle astrophysics is the recent detection of an unexplained 3.5 keV line from galaxy clusters. A promising model, which can explain the morphology of the signal and its non-observation in dwarf spheroidal…
We discuss the possible sources of dark matter axions in the early universe. In the standard thermal scenario, an axion string network forms at the Peccei-Quinn phase transition $T\sim \fa$ and then radiatively decays into a cosmological…
This note is intended to serve as a reference for conventions used in the literature on string compactifications, and how to move between them, collected in a single and easy-to-find place, using type IIB as an illustrative example. We hope…
Moduli fields generically produce strong dark matter -- radiation and baryon -- radiation isocurvature perturbations through their decay if they remain light during inflation. We show that existing upper bounds on the magnitude of such…
Constraints on the tension and the abundance of cosmic strings depend crucially on the rate at which they decay into particles and gravitational radiation. We study the decay of cosmic string loops in the Abelian-Higgs model by performing…
When moduli roll in the early universe, all physical scales - including string tensions - simultaneously evolve. The dynamics of cosmic string loops with time-varying tension can produce cosmic string loop trackers in which most of the…
Exact superstring solutions are constructed in 4-D space-time, with positive curvature and non-trivial dilaton and antisymmetric tensor fields. The full spectrum of string excitations is derived as a function of moduli fields $T^{i}$ and…
We discuss key aspects of the nature of radiation from global strings and its impact on the relic axion density. Using a simple model we demonstrate the dependence on the spectrum of radiation emitted by strings. We then study the radiation…