Related papers: Brane Inflation and Cosmic String Tension in Super…
We show how the motion through the extra dimensions of a gas of branes and antibranes can, under certain circumstances, produce an era of inflation as seen by observers trapped on a 3-brane, with the inflaton being the inter-brane…
We investigate in some quantitative details the viability of reheating in multi-throat brane inflationary scenarios by estimating and comparing the time scales for the various processes involved. We also calculate within perturbative string…
Following the 2015 Planck release, we briefly comment on the status and some ongoing opportunities in the interface between inflationary cosmology, string theory, and CMB data. The constraints in the $r$-$n_s$ plane introduce a new…
Inflationary cosmology is the leading explanation of the very early universe. Many different models of inflation have been constructed which fit current observational data. In this work theoretical and numerical methods for constraining the…
We describe a simple mechanism that can lead to inflation within string-based brane-world scenarios. The idea is to start from a supersymmetric configuration with two parallel static Dp-branes, and slightly break the supersymmetry…
The "central" region of moduli space of M- and string theories is where the string coupling is about unity and the volume of compact dimensions is about the string volume. Here we argue that in this region the non-perturbative potential…
String theory gives rise to various mechanisms to generate primordial inflation, of which ``brane inflation'' is one of the most widely considered. In this scenario, inflation takes place while two branes are approaching each other, and the…
We update the D3/D7-brane inflation model on K3 x T^2/Z_2 with branes and fluxes. For this purpose, we study the low energy theory including g_s corrections to the gaugino condensate superpotential that stabilizes the K3 volume modulus. The…
We discuss a brane based inflationary scenario in which an initially non-supersymmetric configuration involving a D4 brane is dynamically transformed into a supersymmteric one in a background space-time geometry determined by a stack of D6…
We study a new framework for brane-antibrane inflation where moduli stabilisation relies purely on perturbative corrections to the effective action. This guarantees that the model does not suffer from the eta-problem. The inflationary…
A pedagogical introduction to aspects of string cosmology, including the landscape (BPBT) solution to the cosmological constant problem, brane-antibrane inflation, warped compactification, the KKLMMT model, the eta problem of SUGRA models,…
We investigate a novel mechanism of dynamical tuning of a flat potential in the open string landscape within the context of warped brane-antibrane inflation in type IIB string theory. Because of competing effects between interactions with…
At its very beginning, the universe is believed to have grown exponentially in size via the mechanism of inflation. The almost scale-invariant density perturbation spectrum predicted by inflation is strongly supported by cosmological…
String models can produce successful inflationary scenarios in the context of brane collisions and in many of these models cosmic strings may also be produced. In scenarios such as KKLMMT the string contribution is naturally predicted to be…
The inflaton potential in four-dimensional theory is rather arbitrary, and fine-tuning is required generically. By contrast, inflation in the brane world scenario has the interesting feature that the inflaton potential is motivated from…
This short note emphasises a potential tension between string models of inflation based on systems of branes and antibranes and the spectrum of strings in curved space, in particular the requirement that the leading Regge trajectory extends…
We discuss various realizations of the four dimensional braneworld inflation in warped geometries of string theory. In all models the inflaton field is represented by a Dp probe brane scalar specifying its position in the warped throat of…
In these lectures, I review the current status of cosmic strings and cosmic superstrings. I first discuss topological defects in the context of Grand Unified Theories, focusing in particular in cosmic strings arising as gauge theory…
We show that a moduli space of the form predicted by string theory, lifted by supersymmetry breaking, gives rise to successful inflation for large regions of parameter space without any modification or fine tuning. This natural realization…
We study the motion of a D3 brane moving within a Type IIB string vacuum compactified to 4D on K3 x T_2/Z_2 in the presence of D7 and O7 planes. We work within the effective 4D supergravity describing how the mobile D3 interacts with the…