Related papers: Closed String Tachyon Condensation and Worldsheet …
Protecting the inflationary potential from quantum corrections typically requires symmetries that constrain the form of couplings of the inflaton to other sectors. We will explore how these restrictions affect reheating in models with UV…
Loop quantum cosmology (LQC) predicts a nonsingular evolution of the universe through a bounce in the high energy region. We show that this is always true in tachyon matter LQC. Different from the classical Friedman-Robertson-Walker (FRW)…
We propose a stringy version of the old inflation scenario which does not require any slow-roll inflaton potential and is based on a specific example of string compatification with warped metric. Our set-up admits the presence of…
We obtain cosmological constraints on models of inflation which exhibit rapid roll solutions. Rapid roll attractors exist for potentials with large mass terms and are thus of interest for inflationary model building within string theory. We…
In string theory, the traditional picture of a Universe that emerges from the inflation of a very small and highly curved space-time patch is a possibility, not a necessity: quite different initial conditions are possible, and not…
We analyse the cosmological implications of brane-antibrane systems in string-theoretic orbifold and orientifold models. In a class of realistic models, consistency conditions require branes and antibranes to be stuck at different fixed…
We analyze the cosmological consequences of locked inflation, a model recently proposed by Dvali and Kachru that can produce significant amounts of inflation without requiring slow-roll. We pay particular attention to the end of inflation…
We study aspects of inflation and the possibility of enhanced production of primordial black holes (PBHs) and gravitational waves (GWs) in a string-inspired model of two axion fields coupled to Chern-Simons gravity, which results in a…
Chain inflation takes place in the string theory landscape as the universe tunnels rapidly through a series of ever lower energy vacua such as may be characterized by quantized changes in four form fluxes. The string landscape may be well…
In the context of colliding brane worlds I discuss a toy cosmological model, developed in collaboration with E. Gravanis, which arguably produces inflation and a relaxing to zero cosmological ``constant'' hierarchically small as compared to…
We give a generic argument that string theory provides a natural setting for warm inflationary cosmology. We then explore a specific model with an inflaton modulus field coupled to fields that provide the continuous dissipation needed for…
We present an overview of inflationary models derived from string theory focusing mostly on closed string moduli as inflatons. After a detailed discussion of the eta-problem and different approaches to address it, we describe possible ways…
Environment interaction may induce stochastic semiclassical dynamics in open quantum systems. In the gravitational context, stress-energy fluctuations of quantum matter fields give rise to a stochastic behaviour in the spacetime geometry.…
We consider inflationary cosmology in the context of string compactifications with multiple throats. In scenarios where the warping differs significantly between throats, string and Kaluza-Klein physics can generate potentially observable…
We study cosmological inflation within a recently proposed framework of perturbative moduli stabilisation in type IIB/F theory compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds. The stabilisation mechanism utilises three stacks of magnetised…
Considering that the effective theory of closed string tachyons can have worldsheet supersymmetry, as shown by Vafa, we study a worldline supersymmetric action in a FRW background, whose superpotential originates a tachyon scalar potential.…
We propose a class of scalar models that, once coupled to gravity, lead to cosmologies that smoothly and stably connect an inflationary quasi-de Sitter universe to a low, or even zero-curvature, maximally symmetric spacetime in the…
In previous works we have derived a Running Vacuum Model (RVM) for a string Universe, which provides an effective description of the evolution of 4-dimensional string-inspired cosmologies from inflation till the present epoch. In the…
In brane inflationary scenarios, the cosmological perturbations are supposed to originate from the vacuum fluctuations of the inflaton field corresponding to the position of the brane. We show that a significant, and possibly dominant,…
We present a new mechanism for slow-roll inflation based on higher dimensional supersymmetric gauge theory compactified to four dimensions with twisted (supersymmetry breaking) boundary conditions. These boundary conditions lead to a…