Related papers: Flux Compactification
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…
String theoretical ideas might be relevant for particle physics model building. Ideally one would hope to find a unified theory of all fundamental interactions. There are only few consistent string theories in D=10 or 11 space-time…
Low energy effective actions arising from string theory typically contain many scalar fields, some with a very complicated potential and others with no potential at all. The evolution of these scalars is of great interest. Their late time…
Compactified string theories give rise to discrete symmetries which are essential if they are to provide a realistic low energy theory. We find that in a class of four dimensional string theories these symmetries are constrained by similar…
String theory axions appear to be promising candidates for explaining cosmological constant via quintessence. In this paper, we study conditions on the string compactifications under which axion quintessence can happen. For sufficiently…
The stabilization of moduli is one of the main problems in string theory. In this talk I will discuss some stringy mechanisms based on non-geometrical compactifications to obtain four dimensional models with a reduced number of moduli.
Supergravity analysis suggests that the effect of fluxes in string theory compactifications is to gauge isometries of the scalar manifold. However, isometries are generically broken by brane instanton effects. Here we demonstrate how fluxes…
In this thesis we investigate the microphysics of cosmic strings in non-minimal quantum field theories. In particular we consider theories in which fermion fields couple to the strings, and those with larger symmetry groups, such as grand…
We consider quintessence models within 4D effective descriptions of gravity coupled to two scalar fields. These theories are known to give rise to viable models of late-time cosmic acceleration without any need for flat potentials, and so…
Warped compactifications with significant warping provide one of the few known mechanisms for naturally generating large hierarchies of physical scales. We demonstrate that this mechanism is realizable in string theory, and give examples…
Compactifying a higher-dimensional theory defined in R^{1,3+n} on an n-dimensional manifold {\cal M} results in a spectrum of four-dimensional (bosonic) fields with masses m^2_i = \lambda_i, where - \lambda_i are the eigenvalues of the…
In the recent times a lot of effort has been devoted to improve our knowledge about the space of string theory vacua (``the landscape'') to find statistical grounds to justify how and why the theory selects its vacuum. Particularly…
Known mechanisms for breaking of supersymmetry at the level of string theory imply that at least one of the internal dimensions has a very large size. Experimental detection of the associated light Kaluza-Klein (KK) excitations would be a…
The large number of moduli fields arising in a generic string theory compactification makes a complete computation of the low energy effective theory infeasible. A common strategy to solve this problem is to consider Calabi-Yau manifolds…
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…
In this thesis we provide new tools to determine and explore the Landscape of four-dimensional effective field theories originating from string and M-theory. The main aim is to introduce, within four-dimensional effective descriptions,…
Field redefinitions occur in string compactifications at the one loop level. We review arguments for why such redefinitions occur and study their effect on moduli stabilisation and supersymmetry breaking in the LARGE volume scenario. For…
Supersymmetry breaking in string theory is expected to occur when moduli fields acquire non-trivial expectation values. In the early universe these fields start out displaced from their final destinations. I present some recent ideas about…
Compactifications of the heterotic string are a viable route to phenomenologically realistic vacua and interesting new mathematics. While supergravity aspects of heterotic compactifications are largely well-understood their worldsheet…
Infinite distance limits in the moduli space of a quantum gravity theory are characterized by having infinite towers of states becoming light, as dictated by the Distance Conjecture in the Swampland program. These towers imply a drastic…