Related papers: Quintessence with two energy scales
Large extra dimensions lower the Planck scale to values soon accessible. Motivated by String Theory, the models of large extra dimensions predict a vast number of new effects in the energy range of the lowered Planck scale, among them the…
We show that the minimal D = 5, N = 2 gauged supergravity set-up may encode naturally the recently proposed clockwork mechanism. The minimal embedding requires one vector multiplet in addition to the supergravity multiplet and the clockwork…
These four lectures, addressed to an audience of graduate students in experimental high energy physics, survey some of the basic concepts in string theory. The purpose is to convey a general sense of what string theory is and what it has…
In string models with "brane supersymmetry breaking" exponential potentials emerge at (closed-string) tree level but are not accompanied by tachyons. Potentials of this type have long been a source of embarrassment in flat space, but can…
We argue that discreteness at the Planck scale (naturally expected to arise from quantum gravity) might manifest in the form of minute violations of energy-momentum conservation of the matter degrees of freedom when described in terms of…
We conjecture a general upper bound on the strength of gravity relative to gauge forces in quantum gravity. This implies, in particular, that in a four-dimensional theory with gravity and a U(1) gauge field with gauge coupling g, there is a…
We investigate the low energy physics implications of a prototype quasi-realistic superstring model with an anomalous U(1). First, we present the techniques utilized to compute the mass spectrum and superpotential couplings at the string…
String theory suggests modifications of our spacetime such as extra dimensions and the existence of a mininal length scale. In models with addidional dimensions, the Planck scale can be lowered to values accessible by future colliders.…
We discuss the possibility that dark energy arises from a strongly-coupled Higgs-Yang-Mills set of interacting fields in the non-perturbative regime. We choose the simplest $SU(2)$ representation, which is compatible with the Cosmological…
The structure of gauged R supergravity Lagrangians is reviewed, and we consider models with a hidden sector plus light fields of the MSSM. A simple potential for the hidden sector is presented which has a global minimum with zero…
Quantum gravitational effects become significant at a cut-off species scale that can be much lower than the Planck scale whenever we get a parametrically large number of fields becoming light. This is expected to occur at any perturbative…
We show that stable local cosmic strings are a generic prediction of supersymmetric models where supersymmetry is broken at scales within a few orders of magnitude of the weak scale and is fed down to the observable sector by gauge…
This talk is based on my work in collaboration with B. Boisseau, D. Polarski, and A.A. Starobinsky. The most natural and best-motivated alternatives to general relativity are the so-called "scalar-tensor" theories, in which the…
We reanalyze a new quintessence scenario in a brane world model, assuming that a quintessence scalar field is confined in our 3-dimensional brane world. We study three typical quintessence models : (1) an inverse-power-law potential, (2) an…
We add a new scalar field in the no-scale Brans-Dicke gravity and require it to have a global O(2) symmetry with the original scalar field in the Brans-Dicke gravity. This gives us a new massless scalar field in the Einstein frame due to…
The different definitions for the equation of state of a non-minimally coupled scalar field that have been introduced in the literature are analyzed. Particular emphasis is made upon those features that could yield to an observable way of…
We explore the possibility that the fundamental theory of nature does not contain any scale. This implies a renormalizable quantum gravity theory where the graviton kinetic term has 4 derivatives, and can be reinterpreted as gravity minus…
Many models of physics beyond the Standard Model predict minicharged particles to which current and near future low-energy experiments are highly sensitive. Such minicharges arise generically from kinetic-mixing in theories containing at…
We invoke probe brane arguments to classify the asymptotic behavior of general five-dimensional supergravity theories with eight supercharges near infinite distance boundaries of the vector multiplet moduli space. Imposing consistency of…
A number of different approaches to quantum gravity are at least partly phenomenologically characterized by their treatment of Lorentz symmetry, in particular whether the symmetry is exact or modified/broken at the smallest scales. For…