Related papers: Cosmology of Light Moduli
In the present thesis I studied the phenomenology arising from a class of string models called sequestered compactifications, which were born with the aim of getting low-energy SUSY from strings. This is not an easy task if combined with…
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…
We show that if there is a realistic 4-d string, the dilaton and moduli supermultiplets will generically acquire a small mass O(m_{3/2}), providing the only vacuum-independent evidence of low-energy physics in string theory beyond the…
String theory axions appear to be promising candidates for explaining cosmological constant via quintessence. In this paper, we study conditions on the string compactifications under which axion quintessence can happen. For sufficiently…
Axions, grand unification, and string theory are each compelling extensions of the Standard Model. We show that combining these frameworks imposes strong constraints on the QCD axion mass. Using unitarity arguments and explicit string…
If moduli, or other long-lived heavy states, decay in the early universe in part into light and feebly interacting particles (such as axions), these decay products could account for the additional energy density in radiation that is…
Maybe not. String theory approaches to both beyond the Standard Model and Inflationary model building generically predict the existence of scalars (moduli) that are light compared to the scale of quantum gravity. These moduli become…
We propose the gravitino dark matter in the gravity mediated supersymmetry breaking scenario. The mass hierarchies between the gravitino and other superparticles can be achieved by the nontrivial K\"ahler metric of the supersymmetry…
In recent years it has been realized that in string/$M$ theories compactified to four dimensions which satisfy cosmological constraints, it is possible to make some generic predictions for particle physics and dark matter: a non-thermal…
It has been shown that very light or even massless neutralinos are consistent with all current experiments, given non-universal gaugino masses. Furthermore, a very light neutralino is consistent with astrophysical bounds from supernov{\ae}…
Primordial decays of string theory moduli at z \sim 10^{12} naturally generate a dark radiation Cosmic Axion Background (CAB) with 0.1 - 1 keV energies. This CAB can be detected through axion-photon conversion in astrophysical magnetic…
A survey of solutions to the cosmological moduli problem in string theory. The only extant proposal which may work is Intermediate Scale Inflation as proposed by Randall and Thomas. Supersymmetry preserving dynamics which could give large…
A generic prediction of string theory is the existence of many axion fields. It has recently been argued that many of these fields should be light and, like the well known QCD axion, lead to observable cosmological consequences. In this…
In gravity mediated models and in particular in models with strongly stabilized moduli, there is a natural hierarchy between gaugino masses, the gravitino mass and moduli masses: $m_{1/2} \ll m_{3/2} \ll m_{\phi}$. Given this hierarchy, we…
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…
In this article we study the significance of string loop corrections, in a perturbative moduli stabilization scenario, focusing on their role in unraveling the origin of dark radiation in the late cosmological epoch and their correlation to…
We review applications of string theory to cosmology, from primordial times to the present-day accelerated expansion. Starting with a brief overview of cosmology and string compactifications, we discuss in detail moduli stabilisation,…
In some supergravity models, the superlight gravitino is accompanied by a light weakly coupled scalar (S) and pseudo-scalar (P) particle. The coupling of these particles to matter is inversely proportional to the product of the gravitino…
Ultra-light axions (ULAs) with masses in the range 10^{-33} eV <m <10^{-20} eV are motivated by string theory and might contribute to either the dark-matter or dark-energy density of the Universe. ULAs could suppress the growth of structure…
The small-scale power spectrum of the cosmological matter distribution together with other cosmological data provides a sensitive measure of the hot dark matter fraction, leading to restrictive neutrino mass limits. We extend this argument…