Related papers: Cosmological stabilization of moduli with steep po…
We address the important issue of stabilizing the dilaton in the context of superstring cosmology. Scalar potentials which arise out of gaugino condensates in string models are generally exponential in nature. In a cosmological setting this…
We conduct a systematic search for a viable string/M-theory cosmology, focusing on cosmologies that include an era of slow-roll inflation, after which the moduli are stabilized and the Universe is in a state with an acceptably small…
The Standard Model is the low-energy limit of a microscopic theory which includes extra dimensions and new symmetries. A part of my thesis consisted in constructing a new class of models with two extra dimensions. We showed that these…
String theory posesses numerous axion candidates. The recent realization that the compactification radius in string theory might be large means that these states can solve the strong CP problem. This still leaves the question of the…
We consider compactifications of type II string theory using exact internal CFT's with central charge $c=9+\epsilon$, $|\epsilon| \ll 1$, leading to an effective potential for the dilaton. For $\epsilon>0$ the potential is positive and the…
We present a critical review and summary of String Gas Cosmology. We include a pedagogical derivation of the effective action starting from string theory, emphasizing the necessary approximations that must be invoked. Working in the…
Taking into account the recently proposed poly-instanton corrections to the superpotential and combining the race-track with a KKLT respectively LARGE Volume Scenario in an intricate manner, we show that we gain exponential control over the…
It is shown that the coherent field oscillation of moduli fields with weak or TeV scale masses can dissipate its energy efficiently if they have a derivative coupling to standard bosonic fields in a thermal state. This mechanism may provide…
We investigate moduli field dynamics in supergravity/M-theory like set ups where we turn on fluxes along some or all of the extra dimensions. As has been argued in the context of string theory, we observe that the fluxes tend to stabilize…
We estimate the cosmological abundance of a modulus field that has dilatonic couplings to gauge fields, paying particular attention to thermal corrections on the modulus potential. We find that a certain amount of the modulus coherent…
One proposed solution of the moduli problem of string cosmology requires that the moduli are quite heavy, their decays reheating the universe to temperatures above the scale of nucleosynthesis. In many of these scenarios, the moduli are…
We analyze the behaviour of moduli fields in string effective models between the end of inflation and reheating. The effective moduli potential during this era is derived for a class of simple models. We argue that this potential…
We argue that the brane-world picture with matter-fields confined to 4-d domain walls and with gravitational interactions across the bulk disallows adding an arbitrary constant to the low-energy, 4-d effective theory -- which finesses the…
We show that the cosmological abundance of string axions is much smaller than naive estimates if the Hubble scale of inflation, $H_{\rm inf}$, is sufficiently low (but can still be much higher than the axion masses) and if the inflation…
When moduli roll in the early universe, all physical scales - including string tensions - simultaneously evolve. The dynamics of cosmic string loops with time-varying tension can produce cosmic string loop trackers in which most of the…
We provide a thorough exposition, including technical and numerical details, of previously published results on the quantum stabilization of cosmic strings. Stabilization occurs through the coupling to a heavy fermion doublet in a reduced…
We derive a constraint on the cosmic density of string moduli fields in gauge-mediated supersymmetry-breaking theories by requiring that photons emitted from the unstable moduli fields should not exceed the observed X-ray backgrounds. Since…
Recently, an interesting class of the direct gauge mediation supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking models are proposed, in which the minimum of the potential of the SUSY breaking field is determined by the inverted hierarchy mechanism. We consider…
Within two specific string cosmology scenarios --differing in the way the pre- and post-big bang phases are joined-- we compute the size and spectral slope of various types of cosmologically amplified quantum fluctuations that arise in…
The cosmic string theory for cosmological fluctuations is a good example of healthy scientific progress in cosmology. It is a well defined physically motivated model that has been tested by cosmological observations and has been ruled out…