Related papers: Accelerating Cosmologies and Inflation from M/Supe…
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…
I review some aspects of obtaining inflation from string theory, in particular brane-antibrane inflation within the framework of KKLMMT, and racetrack inflation. Further, I discuss recent work on the problem of reheating after…
A gravity-driven inflation is shown to arise from a simple higher dimensional universe. In vacuum, the shear of $n>1$ contracting dimensions is able to inflate the remaining three spatial dimensions. Said another way, the expansion of the…
Cosmological inflation is not the only early universe scenario consistent with current observational data. I will discuss the criteria for a successful early universe cosmology, compare a couple of the proposed scenarios (inflation,…
Inflation of cosmic gauge and global strings is investigated by numerically solving the combined Einstein and field equations. Above some critical symmetry-breaking scales, the strings undergo inflation along the radial direction as well as…
Recently it was observed that the hyperbolic compactification of M/string theory related to S-branes may lead to a transient period of acceleration of the universe. We study time evolution of the corresponding effective 4d cosmological…
We present a systematic study of accelerating cosmologies obtained from M/string theory compactifications of hyperbolic spaces with time-varying volume. A set of vacuum solutions where the internal space is a product of hyperbolic manifolds…
D-term inflation is one of the most interesting and versatile models of inflation. It is possible to implement naturally D-term inflation within high energy physics, as for example SUSY GUTs, SUGRA, or string theories. D-term inflation…
We review two ways in which smooth cosmological evolution between two de Sitter phases can be obtained from M/string-theory. Firstly, we perform a hyperbolic reduction of massive IIA* theory to D=6 N=(1,1) SU(2)xU(1) gauged de Sitter…
Tribrid inflation is a class of supersymmetric inflation models where the scalar component of a matter superfield, or a $D$-flat direction of matter fields, drives inflation. Similar to Hybrid inflation, the end of inflation is reached when…
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…
Supersymmetry is the most natural framework for physics above the TeV scale, and the corresponding framework for early-Universe cosmology, including inflation, is supergravity. No-scale supergravity emerges from generic string…
I elaborate on a link between the string--scale breaking of supersymmetry that occurs in a class of superstring models and the onset of inflation. The link rests on spatially flat cosmologies supported by a scalar field driven by an…
Standard D-term inflation is studied in the framework of supergravity. D-term inflation produces cosmic strings, however it can still be compatible with CMB measurements without invoking any new physics. The cosmic strings contribution to…
In effective supergravity theories following from the superstring, a modulus field can quite naturally set the neccessary initial conditions for successful cosmological inflation to be driven by a hidden sector scalar field. The leading…
We show that the naive application of the Kibble mechanism seriously underestimates the initial density of cosmic superstrings that can be formed during the annihilation of D-branes in the early universe, as in models of brane-antibrane…
We provide a pedagogical overview of inflation in string theory. Our theme is the sensitivity of inflation to Planck-scale physics, which we argue provides both the primary motivation and the central theoretical challenge for the subject.…
Inflation is well known to be difficult in the context of supergravity, if the potential is dominated by the $F$ term. Non-renormalizable terms generically give $|V''|\sim V/M^2$, where $V(\phi)$ is the inflaton potential and $M$ is the…
We construct a solution satisfying initial conditions for accelerating cosmologies from string/M-theory. Gowdy symmetric spacetimes with a positive potential are considered. Also, a global existence theorem for the spacetimes is shown.