Related papers: Thermal background can solve the cosmological modu…
Anthropic solutions to the cosmological constant problem require seemingly unnatural scalar field potentials with a very small slope or domain walls (branes) with a very small coupling to a four-form field. Here we introduce a class of…
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 present and discuss, at a general level, new mathematical results on the spatial nonuniformity of thermal quantum fields coupled minimally to static background electromagnetic potentials. Two distinct examples are worked through in some…
We consider thermal effects in the propagation of gravitational waves on a cosmological background. In particular, we consider scalar field cosmologies and study gravitational modes near cosmological singularities. We point out that the…
We show that a mass-varying neutrino model driven by scalar field dark energy relaxes the existing upper bound on the current neutrino mass to ${\sum m_\nu < 0.72}$ eV. We extend the standard $\Lambda$ cold dark matter model by introducing…
The appearance of scalar/moduli fields in the early universe, as motivated by string theory, naturally leads to non-thermal "moduli cosmology". Such cosmology provides a consistent framework where the generation of radiation, baryons, and…
We consider a class of models in which thermal dark matter is lighter than an MeV. If dark matter thermalizes with the Standard Model below the temperature of neutrino-photon decoupling, equilibration and freeze-out cools and heats the…
The stability of cosmological solutions in the recently suggested specific mechanism of dynamical compensation of vacuum energy is studied. It is found that the solutions in the original version lead to cosmological singularity which could…
Cosmological Coleman-Weinberg potentials are induced when normal matter is coupled to the inflaton. It has long been known that the corrections from bosonic fields are positive whereas those from fermionic fields are negative. In flat space…
We review some aspects of moduli in string theory. We argue that one should focus on {\it approximate moduli spaces}, and that there is evidence that such spaces exist non-perturbatively. We ask what it would mean for string theory to…
We argue that, when a theory of gravity and matter is endowed with (classical) conformal symmetry, the fine tuning required to obtain the cosmological constant at its observed value can be significantly reduced. Once tuned, the cosmological…
We propose a new dark energy model for solving the cosmological fine-tuning and coincidence problems. A default assumption is that the fine-tuning problem disappears if we do not interpret dark energy as vacuum energy. The key idea to…
One proposed solution of the moduli problem of string cosmology requires that the moduli are quite heavy, their decays reheating the universe to temperatures above the scale of nucleosynthesis. In many of these scenarios, the moduli are…
An exploratory study of the cosmology of moduli in string theory. Moduli are argued to be natural inflaton fields and lead to a robust inflationary cosmology in which inflation takes place at the top of domain walls. The amplitude of…
Warm dark matter cosmologies have been widely studied as an alternative to the cold dark matter paradigm, the characteristic feature being a suppression of structure formation on small cosmological scales. A very similar situation occurs if…
We look for ways to destabilise the vacuum. We describe how dense matter environments source a contribution to moduli potentials and analyse the conditions required to initiate either decompactification or a local shift in moduli vevs. We…
Several attempts to solve the cosmological constant problem, which concerns the value of the cosmological constant being extremely smaller than the Standard Model mass scales, have introduced a scalar field with a very flat potential that…
Results of a general study on the dynamics of cosmological scalar fields with arbitrary potentials are presented. Exact and approximate attractor solutions are found, with applications to quintessence, moduli stabilization and inflation.
We investigate the possibility of replacing the cosmological constant with gradual condensation of a scalar field produced during the decay of a superheavy dark matter. The advantage of this class of models to the ordinary quintessence is…
The thermodynamic equilibrium conditions for compact structures composed by mass varying particles are discussed assuming that the so-called dynamical mass behaves like an additional extensive thermodynamic degree of freedom. It then…