Related papers: Cosmological stabilization of moduli with steep po…
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…
Faced by recent evidence for a flat universe dominated by dark energy, cosmologists grapple with deep cosmic enigmas such as the cosmological constant problem, extreme fine-tuning and the cosmic coincidence problem. The extent to which we…
Supersymmetry and string theory suggest the existence of light moduli. Their presence, or absence, controls the realization of supersymmetry at low energies. If there are no such fields, or if all such fields are fixed in a supersymmetric…
In superstring theories, there exist various dilaton and modulus fields which masses are expected to be of the order of the gravitino mass $m_{3/2}$. These fields lead to serious cosmological difficulties, so called ``cosmological moduli…
The cosmological constant term can be seen as a constant potential for a (scalar) field. In this viewpoint, at late times, the field is stopped rolling and behaves as a cosmological constant ($w=-1$). While at the early universe, its…
We show that cosmological observables can constrain the topology of the compact additional dimensions predicted by string theory. To do this, we develop a general strategy for relating cosmological observables to the microscopic parameters…
A novel mechanism to produce a cosmic network of fundamental superstrings based on a time-varying string tension has been recently proposed. It has been found that fundamental superstrings can grow in a kinating background driven by the…
Increasing evidence suggests that most of the energy density of the universe consists of a dark energy component with negative pressure, a ``cosmological constant" that causes the cosmic expansion to accelerate. In this paper, we address…
Moduli fields, which parameterize perturbative flat directions of the potential in supersymmetric theories, are natural candidates to act as inflatons. An inflationary potential on moduli space can result if the scale of dynamical SUSY…
In String Gas Cosmology, the simplest shape modulus fields are naturally stabilized by taking into account the presence of string winding and momentum modes. We determine the resulting effective potential for these fields and show that it…
We discuss effects of cosmological moduli fields on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). If a modulus field \phi once dominates the universe, the CMB we observe today is from the decay of \phi and its anisotropy is affected by the…
We propose an approach to explaining why naive large quantum fluctuations are not the right estimate for the cosmological constant. We argue that the universe is in a superposition of many vacua, in such a way that the resulting…
We study dynamical moduli stabilization driven by gaugino condensation in supergravity. In the presence of background radiation, there exists a region of initial conditions leading to successful stabilization. We point out that most of the…
The interplay between string theory and early-universe cosmology offers promising avenues to explore high-energy regimes where the standard single-field slow-roll model may no longer provide an accurate description. One intriguing scenario…
Cosmological moduli generically come to dominate the energy density of the early universe, and thereby trigger an early matter dominated era. Such non-standard cosmological histories are expected to have profound effects on the evolution…
While axions seem ubiquitous in critical string theories, whether they might survive in any string theoretic description of nature is a difficult question. With some mild assumptions, one can frame the issues in the case that there is an…
We critically review the role of cosmological moduli in determining the post-inflationary history of the universe. Moduli are ubiquitous in string and M-theory constructions of beyond the Standard Model physics, where they parametrize the…
We present a modular cosmology scenario where the difficulties encountered in conventional modular cosmology are solved in a self-consistent manner, with definite predictions to be tested by observation. Notably, the difficulty of the…
Cosmic (super)strings offer promising ways to test ideas about the early universe and physics at high energies. While in field theory constructions their tension is usually assumed to be constant (or at most slowly-varying), this is often…
We explore the cosmological content of Salam-Sezgin six dimensional supergravity, and find a solution to the field equations in qualitative agreement with observation of distant supernovae, primordial nucleosynthesis abundances, and recent…