Related papers: Challenges for Superstring Cosmology
The inflationary scenario has become the paradigm of early universe cosmology, and - in conjuction with ideas from superstring theory - has led to speculations about an "inflationary multiverse". From a point of view of phenomenology, the…
Cosmic strings are predicted by many field-theory models, and may have been formed at a symmetry-breaking transition early in the history of the universe, such as that associated with grand unification. They could have important…
These four lectures cover four topics in modern cosmology: the cosmological constant, the cosmic microwave background, inflation, and cosmology as a probe of physics at the Planck scale. The underlying theme is that cosmology gives us a…
Cosmological perturbations are generally described by quantum fields on (curved but) classical space-times. While this strategy has a large domain of validity, it can not be justified in the quantum gravity era where curvature and matter…
We present time-dependent solutions in the higher-dimensional gravity which are related to supergravity in the particular cases. Here, we consider p-branes with a cosmological constant and the intersections of two and more branes. The…
String theory avoids the ultraviolet infinities that arise in trying to quantize gravity. It is also more predictive than conventional quantum field theory, one aspect of this being the way that it contributed to the emergence of the…
In a simple reanalysis of the KKLMMT scenario, we argue that the slow roll condition in the D3-anti-D3-brane inflationary scenario in superstring theory requires no more than a moderate tuning. The cosmic string tension is very sensitive to…
String theory contains sources like orientifold planes that support higher derivative interactions. These interactions make possible static flux compactifications which are forbidden in supergravity. They can also lead to violations of the…
Recent developments in string duality suggest that the string scale may not be irrevocably tied to the Planck scale. Two explicit but unrealistic examples are described where the ratio of the string scale to the Planck scale is arbitrarily…
We propose a minimal model framework for physics below the Planck scale with the following features: (i) it is based on no-scale supergravity, as favoured in many string compactifications, (ii) it incorporates Starobinsky-like inflation,…
Exact cosmological solutions for effective actions in D dimensions inspired by the tree-level superstring action are studied. For a certain range of free parameters existing in the model, nonsingular bouncing solutions are found. Among…
The quantum field theory prediction of the cosmological constant is 120 orders of magnitude higher than the observed value. This is known as the cosmological constant problem. Here, we deal with the cosmological constant as a scalar field…
We consider cosmological consequences of string theory tachyon condensation. We show that it is very difficult to obtain inflation in the simplest versions of this theory. Typically, inflation in these theories could occur only at…
In order to solve the fine-tuning problem of the cosmological constant, we propose a simple model with the vacuum energy non-minimally coupled to the inflaton field. In this model, the vacuum energy decays to the inflaton during…
Our current best guess for a unified theory of gravitation and quantum field theory (string theory) generically predicts a set of requirements for a consistently quantized theory, the Swampland criteria. Refined versions of these criteria…
We review the recent developments in obtaining accelerating cosmologies and/or inflation from higher-dimensional gravitational theories, in particular superstring theories in ten dimensions and M-theory in eleven dimensions. We first…
We present a minimal model for the Universe evolution fully extracted from effective String Theory. This model is by its construction close to the standard cosmological evolution, and it is driven selfconsistently by the evolution of the…
The interplay between string theory and cosmology is very promising. Since string theory will yield a quantum theory of space-time and unify all forces of nature, it has the potential of addressing many of the conceptual problems of the…
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…
The Planck scale is usually believed to be an unpassable wall. Putting a cutoff there and thinking of it as a quantized spacetime entity shows that. However, this is exactly the cause of many problems in quantum gravity. The cosmological…