Related papers: On Open Membranes, Cosmic Strings and Moduli Stabi…
We present supersymmetric soliton solutions of the four-dimensional heterotic string corresponding to monopoles, strings and domain walls. These solutions admit the $D=10$ interpretation of a fivebrane wrapped around $5$, $4$ or $3$ of the…
Exact string solutions are presented, where moduli fields are varying with time. They provide examples where a dynamical change of the topology of space is occurring. Some other solutions give cosmological examples where some dimensions are…
A scenario which overcomes the well-known cosmological overshoot problem associated with stabilizing moduli with steep potentials in string theory is proposed. Our proposal relies on the fact that moduli potentials are very steep and that…
Considering SO(32) heterotic string theory compactified on a torus of dimension 4 and less, stability of non-supersymmetric states is studied. A non-supersymmetric state with robust stability is constructed, and its exact stability is…
We investigate the moduli stabilization in string gas compactification. We first present a numerical evidence showing the stability of the radion and the dilaton. To understand this numerical result, we construct the 4-dimensional effective…
The compactification of the heterotic string on six-dimensional orbifolds is reviewed. Some important technical aspects of their construction are clarified and new parameters, called generalized discrete torsion, are introduced and related…
We consider new cosmological solutions with a collapsing, an intermediate and an expanding phase. The boundary between the expanding (collapsing) phase and the intermediate phase is seen by comoving observers as a cosmological past (future)…
We report on a large scale numerical study of networks of semilocal cosmic strings in flat space in the parameter regime in which they are perturbatively stable. We find a population of segments with an exponential length distribution and…
Finding a consistent way to stabilize the various moduli fields which generically appear in string theory compactifications, is essential if string theory is to make contact with the physics we see around us. We present, in this paper, a…
We investigate the embedding of brane inflation into stable compactifications of string theory. At first sight a warped compactification geometry seems to produce a naturally flat inflaton potential, evading one well-known difficulty of…
Cosmic strings can arise in hidden sector models with a spontaneously broken Abelian symmetry group. We have studied the couplings of the Standard Model fields to these so-called dark strings in the companion paper. Here we survey the…
We consider the effective action for strings and describe in detail the evolution of a four dimensional homogeneous isotropic universe with matter included. We find that the evolution, which is singular in general, becomes singularity free…
Cosmic strings are predicted in many models beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In models which admit strings, a network of strings will inevitably be formed in a phase transition in the early universe and will persist to the…
We consider the phenomenological consequences of fixing compactification moduli. In the simplest KKLT constructions, stabilization of internal dimensions is rather soft: weak scale masses for moduli are generated, and are of order m_\sigma…
We briefly review attempts to construct string theories that yield the standard model, concentrating on models with a geometric interpretation. Calabi-Yau compactifications are discussed in the context of both the weakly coupled heterotic…
It is emphasized that compactified little string theories have compact moduli spaces of vacua, which globally probe compact string geometry. Compactifying various little string theories on T^3 leads to 3d theories with exact, quantum…
Stabilizing all of the modulus fields coming from compactifications of string theory on internal manifolds is one of the outstanding challenges for string cosmology. Here, in a simple example of toroidal compactification, we study the…
We consider, in five dimensions, the effective action from heterotic string which includes quantum gravity corrections up to (a')^2. The expansion, in the string frame, is in terms of |a'R|, where R is the scalar curvature and uses 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…
By studying 2d string compactifications with half-maximal supersymmetry in a variety of duality frames, we find a natural physical setting for understanding Umbral moonshine. Near points in moduli space with enhanced gauge symmetry, we find…