Related papers: The Giant Inflaton
It was recently pointed out that the fundamental Planck mass could be close to the TeV scale with the observed weakness of gravity at long distances being due the existence of new sub-millimeter spatial dimensions. In this picture the…
We study the dilaton stabilization in the D-brane world in which a D-brane constitutes our universe. The dilaton can be stabilized due to the interplay between the D-brane tension and the negative scalar curvature of extra dimensions.…
We obtain brane inflation in configurations with Dp and D(p-2) branes which are far apart and almost perpendicular to each other. Chaotic brane inflation occurs when the branes can only rotate with the inflaton given by the angle between…
We discuss E3-brane instantons in N=1 F-theory compactifications to four dimensions and clarify the structure of E3-E3 zero modes for general world-volume fluxes. We consistently incorporate SL(2,Z) monodromies and highlight the relation…
Randall and Sundrum have proposed that we live on a brane embedded in 5-dimensional anti-deSitter space, as a solution to the hierarchy problem. We examine the possibility of using a scalar field in the 5-D bulk as the inflaton, and show…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture, if valid, rules out simple models of Natural Inflation by restricting their axion decay constant to be sub-Planckian. We revisit stringy attempts to realise Natural Inflation, with a single open string axionic…
Flux couplings to string theory axions yield super-Planckian field ranges along which the axion potential energy grows. At the same time, other aspects of the physics remain essentially unchanged along these large displacements, respecting…
We study the cosmological properties of a metastable de Sitter vacuum obtained recently in the framework of type IIB flux compactifications in the presence of three D7-brane stacks, based on perturbative quantum corrections at both…
We consider a brane world inflationary model in which inflation is driven by dynamics of a self-interacting scalar field living in the five-dimensional bulk. The scalar field is non-minimally coupled to matter fields on the brane and acts…
We propose that inflation is driven by a (complex) neutral Higgs of the MSSM extension of the SM, in a chaotic-like inflation setting. The SUSY breaking soft term masses are of order $10^{12}-10^{13}$ GeV, which is identified with the…
We derive constraints on the tensor to scalar ratio and on the background charge of the warped throat for DBI inflation driven by D5- and D7-branes wrapped over cycles of the throat. It is shown that the background charge well beyond the…
In this work, we propose a string-inspired two fields inflation model to address the fine-tuning problem that the standard inflation model suffers. The fast-rolling tachyon $\mathcal{T}$ originated from the D-brane and anti-D-brane pair…
We carry out a thorough analysis of the moduli space of the cascading gauge theory found on p D3-branes and M wrapped D5-branes at the tip of the conifold. We find various mesonic branches of the moduli space whose string duals involve the…
We study the consistency of large-field inflation in low-energy effective field theories of string theory. In particular, we focus on the stability of K\"ahler moduli in the particularly interesting case where the non-perturbative…
Inflation is part of the Standard Model of the Universe supported by CMB and large scale structure LSS datasets. This review presents new developments of inflation in three main chapters. (I): The effective theory of inflation a la…
We study the combined effect of world-volume and background fluxes on Euclidean D3-brane instantons in F-theory compactifications. We derive an appropriate form of the fermionic effective action, in which the fermions are topologically…
Inspired by the Randall-Sundrum brane-world scenario, we investigate the possibility of brane-world inflation driven not by an inflaton field on the brane, but by a bulk, dilaton-like gravitational field. As a toy model for the dilaton-like…
Anti-D3 branes and non-perturbative effects in flux compactifications spontaneously break supersymmetry and stabilise moduli in a metastable de Sitter vacua. The low energy 4D effective field theory description for such models would be a…
Inflationary models driven by a large number of axion fields are discussed in the context of type IIB compactifications with N=1 supersymmetry. The inflatons arise as the scalar modes of the R-R two-forms evaluated on vanishing two-cycles…
In this paper we propose a new mechanism of inflating the Universe with non-BPS $D4$ branes which decay into stable $D3$ branes via tachyon condensation. In a single brane scenario the tachyon potential is very steep and unable to support…