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We study a cosmological model in which phantom dark energy is coupled to dark matter by phenomenologically introducing a coupled term to the equations of motion of dark energy and dark matter. This term is parameterized by a dimensionless…
In brane-world models with low tension, massive branons are natural candidates for dark matter. The phenomenology of these WIMP-like particles is completely determined by their mass, the brane tension and, in the case of effects due to…
The implications of string theory for understanding the dimension of uncompactified spacetime are investigated. Using recent ideas in string cosmology, a new model is proposed to explain why three spatial dimensions grew large. Unlike the…
In this colloquium-level account, I describe the cosmological constant problem: why is the energy of empty space at least 60 orders of magnitude smaller than several known contributions to it from the Standard Model of particle physics? I…
We study the cosmology induced on a brane probing a warped throat region in a Calabi-Yau compactification of type IIB string theory. For the case of a BPS D3-brane probing the Klebanov-Strassler warped deformed conifold, the cosmology…
A long-range force acting only between nonbaryonic particles would be associated with a large violation of the weak equivalence principle. We explore cosmological consequences of this idea, which we label ReBEL (daRk Breaking Equivalence…
We present evidence that a special class of gravitationally-coupled hidden sectors, in which conformal invariance is dynamically broken in a controlled way, exhibit the properties of dark energy. Such quantum field theories may appear while…
In this thesis we study the dynamics of higher-dimensional gravity in a universe emerging from a brane collision. We develop a set of powerful analytic methods which, we believe, render braneworld cosmological perturbation theory solvable.…
The Cosmological Constant Problem is re-examined from an effective field theory perspective. While the connection between gravity and particle physics has not been experimentally probed in the quantum regime, it is severely constrained by…
D-branes are fundamental in all scenarios where there are large extra dimensions and the string scale is much smaller than the four-dimensional Planck mass. We show that this current picture leads to a new approach to string cosmology where…
We consider electromagnetic field quantization in an expanding universe. We find that the covariant (Gupta-Bleuler) method exhibits certain difficulties when trying to impose the quantum Lorenz condition on cosmological scales. We thus…
String theory compactifications come with numerous $U(1)$ factors, implying the presence of many hidden photons in the low-energy EFT. One may call this the ``string photoverse''. We argue that, generically, these hidden photons are…
Cosmology motivated by string theory has been studied extensively in the recent literature. String theory is promising because it has interesting features such as unifying gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces. However,…
The Swampland program, which looks for low energy theories consistent with quantum gravity, has led to the introduction of a dark dimension stemming from the cosmological constant. We show that the same argument leads to the emergence of…
Brane Gas Cosmology (BGC) is an approach to unifying string theory and cosmology in which matter is described by a gas of strings and branes in a dilaton gravity background. The Universe is assumed to start out with all spatial dimensions…
A brief discussion is presented assessing the achievements and challenges of string phenomenology: the subfield dedicated to study the potential for string theory to make contact with particle physics and cosmology. Building from the well…
D-branes, topological defects in string theory on which string endpoints can live, may give new insight into the understanding of the cosmological evolution of the Universe at early epochs. We analyze the dynamics of D-branes in curved…
We outline a dynamical dark energy scenario whose signatures may be simultaneously tested by astronomical observations and laboratory experiments. The dark energy is a field with slightly sub-gravitational couplings to matter, a logarithmic…
Cosmology and particle physics are deeply interrelated. Among the common problems are dark energy, dark matter and baryon asymmetry of the Universe. We discuss these problems in general terms, and concentrate on several particular…
A mildly inhomogeneous universe with a cosmological constant may look like it contains evolving dark energy. We show that could be the case by modelling the inhomogeneities and their effects in three different ways: as clumped matter…