Related papers: Mixmaster Horava-Witten Cosmology
The topic of cosmic strings provides a bridge between the physics of the very small and the very large. They are predicted by some unified theories of particle interactions. If they exist, they may help to explain some of the largest-scale…
Recent work on $N=2$ supersymmetric Bianchi type IX cosmologies coupled to a scalar field is extended to a general treatment of homogeneous quantum cosmologies with explicitely solvable momentum constraints, i.e. Bianchi types I, II, VII,…
In this paper, we present two non-perturbative string cosmological solutions without curvature singularities for the bosonic gravi-dilaton system. These solutions are general in the sense that they can straightforwardly match the…
We attempt a critical reconsideration of "detailed balance" as a principle that can be used to restrict the proliferation of couplings in Horava-Lifshitz gravity. We re-examine the shortcomings that have been usually associated with it in…
I discuss cosmological models either derived from, or inspired by, string theory or M-theory. In particular I discuss solutions in the low-energy effective theory and the role of the dilaton, moduli and antisymmetric form fields in the…
The cosmological equations suggested by the non-relativistic renormalizable gravitational theory proposed by Ho\v{r}ava are considered. It is pointed out that the early universe cosmology has features that may give an alternative to…
The weakly coupled vacuum of $E_8\otimes E_8$ heterotic string theory remains an attractive scenario for phenomenolgy and cosmology. The particle spectrum is reviewed and the issues of gauge coupling unification, dilaton stabilization and…
The cosmology of the Horava-Witten M-Theory reduced to five dimensions retaining the volume modulus is considered. Brane matter is considered as a perturbation on the vacuum solution, and the question of under what circumstances does the…
If nature is described by string theory, and if the compactification radius is large (as suggested by the unification of couplings), then the theory is in a regime best described by the low energy limit of $M$-theory. We discuss some…
String cosmology aims at providing a reliable description of the very early Universe in the regime where standard-model physics is no longer appropriate, and where we can safely apply the basic ingredients of superstring models such as…
The cosmological constant problem is a failure of naturalness and suggests that a fine-tuning mechanism is at work, which may also address the hierarchy problem. An example -- supported by Weinberg's successful prediction of the…
Bianchi-type string cosmology involves generalizations of the FRW backgrounds with three transitive spacelike Killing symmetries, but without any a priori assumption of isotropy in the 3D sections of homogeneity. With emphasis on those…
We construct exact time-dependent solutions of the supergravity equations of motion in which two initially non-singular branes, one with positive and the other with negative tension, move together and annihilate each other in an…
In this paper, we study a projectable Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz cosmology without the detailed balance condition minimally coupled to a non-linear self-coupling scalar field. In the minisuperspace framework, the super Hamiltonian of the presented…
It is well known that the so called Bianchi IX spacetimes with SO(3)-symmetry in a neighbourhood of the Big Bang exhibit a chaotic behaviour of typical trajectories in the backward movement of time. This behaviour (Mixmaster Model of the…
We compute the amount of inflation required to solve the horizon problem of cosmology in the pre-big-bang scenario. First we give a quick overview of string cosmology as developed by Veneziano and collaborators. Then we show that the amount…
This work summarises recent progress obtained by the mini-superpspace quantization of $\mathcal N=1$, $d=4$ supergravity, formulated in the framework of the Bianchi IX cosmological model. The emphasis is put on three main results : the…
We provide the first example of a cosmological solution of the Horava-Witten supergravity. This solution is obtained by exchanging the role of time with the radial coordinate of the transverse space to the five-brane soliton. On the…
Cosmic strings can arise in hidden sector models with a spontaneously broken Abelian symmetry group. We have studied the couplings of the Standard Model fields to these so-called dark strings in the companion paper. Here we survey the…
We compactify M-theory in the Horava-Witten formulation on S^1/Z_2 \times K3 \times T^2. Focusing on the moduli-space of vector multiplets of the resulting four-dimensional N=2 theory, we determine the prepotential as an expansion in two…