Related papers: Cosmology of Light Moduli
We consider a scenario where supersymmetry (SUSY) is broken at a relatively low scale by modular fields of extra compact spacelike dimensions. The effect of both soft and hard SUSY breaking terms on the mass of the lightest neutral Higgs…
We investigate compactifications of M-theory from $11\to 5\to 4$ dimensions and discuss geometrical properties of 4-d moduli fields related to the structure of 5-d theory. We study supersymmetry breaking by compactification of the fifth…
In string compactification preserving N=1 SUSY, moduli fields are plausible candidates for the messenger of SUSY breaking at low energy scales. In a scenario that moduli-mediated SUSY breaking is significant, the pattern of soft SUSY…
Axions with mass greater than 0.7 eV are excluded by cosmological precision data because they provide too much hot dark matter. While for masses above 20 eV the axion lifetime drops below the age of the universe, we show that the…
The sum of cosmic neutrino masses can be measured cosmologically, as the sub-eV particles behave as `hot' dark matter whose main effect is to suppress the clustering of matter compared to a universe with the same amount of purely cold dark…
In some models of supersymmetry breaking, modulus fields are heavy enough to decay before BBN. But the large entropy produced via moduli decay significantly dilutes the preexisting baryon asymmetry of the universe. We study whether…
A recent cosmological bound on the gravitino mass, $m_{3/2}<4.7$ eV, together with LHC results on the Higgs mass and direct searches, excludes minimal gauge mediation with high reheating temperatures. We discuss a minimal, vector-mediated…
A range of experimental results point to the existence of a massive neutrino. The recent high precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background and the large scale surveys of galaxies can be used to place an upper bound on this…
High-scale string inflationary models are in well-known tension with low-energy supersymmetry. A promising solution involves models where the inflaton is the volume of the extra dimensions so that the gravitino mass relaxes from large…
It is widely believed that string theory easily allows for a QCD axion in the cosmologically favoured mass range. The required small decay constant, $f_a\ll M_P$, can be implemented by using a large compactification volume. This points to…
Recent models invoking extra spacelike dimensions inhabited by (bulk) neutrinos are shown to have significant cosmological effects if the size of the largest extra dimension is R > 1 fm. We consider effects on cosmic microwave background…
A generic aspect of low-energy effective field theories (EFTs) coming from string compactifications is the appearance of moduli fields. Among these moduli, the axion and dilaton are present as (pseudo-) Goldstone bosons from the spontaneous…
Axion-like particles with masses in the keV-GeV range have a profound impact on the cosmological evolution of our Universe, in particular on the abundance of light elements produced during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. The resulting limits are…
Consistent frameworks of quantum gravity often predict the existence of large numbers of ultralight pseudoscalar degrees of freedom, forming the phenomenological landscape of the String Axiverse. The complexity of the extra-dimensional…
Within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) we systematically investigate the bounds on the mass of the lightest neutralino. We allow for non-universal gaugino masses and thus even consider massless neutralinos, while assuming…
Starting from the previously constructed effective supergravity theory below the scale of U(1) breaking in orbifold compactifications of the weakly coupled heterotic string, we study the effective theory below the scale of supersymmetry…
Gauginos may be nearly massless at tree level, with loop corrections giving a gluino mass of order 100 MeV and a photino mass of order 1 GeV. Relic photinos can naturally account for the observed dark matter, but their detection is more…
We study closed string axions in type IIB orientifold compactifications. We show that for natural values of the background fluxes the moduli stabilisation mechanism of the LARGE Volume Scenario (LVS) gives rise to an axiverse characterised…
The case for small neutrino mass differences from atmospheric and solar neutrino oscillation experiments has become compelling, but leaves the overall neutrino mass scale m_nu undetermined. The most restrictive limit of m_nu < 0.8 eV arises…
We propose heavy axions as a natural superheavy dark matter candidate in string theory, with the relic density of dark matter originating in quantum fluctuations during cosmic inflation. String Theory is well known for the possibility of…