Related papers: Closed String Tachyon Condensation and Worldsheet …
The most important criteria for a successful inflation are to explain the observed temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation, and exiting inflation in a vacuum where it can excite the Standard Model quarks and…
The main problem of inflation in string theory is finding the models with a flat potential, consistent with stabilization of the volume of the compactified space. This can be achieved in the theories where the potential has (an approximate)…
The curvaton and the inhomogeneous reheating scenarios for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represent an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario where the observed density perturbations are…
We find a description of hybrid inflation in (3+1)-dimensions using brane dynamics of Hanany-Witten type. P-term inflation/acceleration of the universe with the hybrid potential has a slow-roll de Sitter stage and a waterfall stage which…
We explore a reduced phase space quantization of loop quantum cosmology (LQC) for a spatially flat FLRW universe filled with reference fields and an inflaton field in a Starobinsky inflationary potential. We consider three separate cases in…
We investigate the embedding of brane inflation into stable compactifications of string theory. At first sight a warped compactification geometry seems to produce a naturally flat inflaton potential, evading one well-known difficulty of…
We show that it is possible to combine an early phase of String Gas Cosmology which can explain the origin of the observed structures on cosmological scales with a short later period of power law inflation which creates spatial flatness.…
Axion fluctuations generated during inflation lead to isocurvature and non-Gaussian temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Following a previous analysis for the model independent string axion we consider the…
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…
We show how the motion through the extra dimensions of a gas of branes and antibranes can, under certain circumstances, produce an era of inflation as seen by observers trapped on a 3-brane, with the inflaton being the inter-brane…
We examine the dynamics of a closed cosmology whose matter source is that of a conformally coupled scalar field with a broken ${\rm SO}(1,1)$ symmetry, which correspond to the $\alpha$-attractors proposed by Linde and Kallosh. Following a…
In this note we show that models of natural inflation based on closed string axions are incompatible with the weak gravity conjecture (WGC). Specifically, we use T-duality in order to map the bounds on the charge-to-mass ratio of particles…
We demonstrate an inflationary solution to the cosmological horizon problem during the Hagedorn regime in the early universe. Here the observable universe is confined to three spatial dimensions (a three-brane) embedded in higher…
We demonstrate an inflationary solution to the cosmological horizon problem during the Hagedorn regime in the early universe. Here the observable universe is confined to three spatial dimensions (a three-brane) embedded in higher…
We propose an alternative scenario to cosmic inflation for producing the initial seeds of cosmic structures. The cosmological fluctuations are generated by thermal fluctuation of the energy density of the ideal string gas in three compact…
We study the motion of a BPS D3-brane in the NS5-brane ring background. The radion field becomes tachyonic in this geometrical set up. We investigate the potential of this geometrical tachyon in the cosmological scenario for inflation as…
Quantum gravitational back-reaction offers the potential of simultaneously resolving the problem of the cosmological constant and providing a natural model of inflation in which scalars play no special role. In this model inflation begins…
We investigate multi-field inflationary scenarios with fields that drop out of the model in a staggered fashion. This feature is natural in certain multi-field inflationary setups within string theory; for instance, it can manifest itself…
Recent cosmic microwave background observations favor low energy scale inflationary models in a closed universe. However, onset of inflation in such models for a closed universe is known to be severely problematic. In particular, such a…
A class of well-motivated models of inflation end by producing cosmic strings. The current status of efforts to calculate and observe the signals from such models are outlined, with a particular emphasis on cosmic strings, and on the Cosmic…