Related papers: Post Inflationary Behaviour of String Moduli
We propose a possibility that the inflaton potential is significantly modified after inflation due to heavy field dynamics. During inflation there may be a heavy scalar field stabilized at a value deviated from the low-energy minimum. As…
We consider inflationary cosmology in the context of string compactifications with multiple throats. In scenarios where the warping differs significantly between throats, string and Kaluza-Klein physics can generate potentially observable…
Recent developments on large scale string moduli stabilization via non-geometric fluxes are reviewed. In the framework of type IIB orientifolds on fluxed Calabi-Yau manifolds, the existence of so-called flux-scaling minima provides a good…
Tree-level moduli stabilization via geometric and non-geometric fluxes in type IIB orientifolds on Calabi-Yau manifolds is investigated. The focus is on stable non-supersymmetric minima, where all moduli are fixed except for some massless…
We study the CMB observables in axion monodromy inflation. These well-motivated scenarios for inflation in string theory have monomial potentials over super-Planckian field ranges, with superimposed sinusoidal modulations from instanton…
We revisit the cosmological history in the presence of light moduli by including possible thermal effects in the scalar potential. The well known cosmological moduli problem regards initial energy stored in the moduli due to a misalignment…
We calculate the power spectrum of curvature perturbations when the inflaton field is rolling over the top of a local maximum of a potential. We show that the evolution of the field can be decomposed into a late-time attractor, which is…
We propose a new mechanism that adapts to string theory a perturbative method for stabilizing moduli without leaving the domain of perturbative control, thereby evading the `Dine-Seiberg' problem. The only required nonperturbative…
Protecting the inflationary potential from quantum corrections typically requires symmetries that constrain the form of couplings of the inflaton to other sectors. We will explore how these restrictions affect reheating in models with UV…
We explore some issues in slow roll inflation in situations where field excursions are small compared to $M_p$. We argue that for small field inflation, minimizing fine tuning requires low energy supersymmetry and a tightly constrained…
We present an effective model where the inflaton is a relaxion that scans the Higgs mass and sets it at the weak scale. The dynamics consist of a long epoch in which inflation is due to the shallow slope of the potential, followed by a few…
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…
In this work, we present two classes of inflationary models in the framework of type IIB string theory. The inflatons correspond to blow-up K\"ahler modulus arising from compactifying type IIB string theory on a Calabi-Yau. Using…
We investigate the possibility of $D$-term inflation within the framework of type I string-inspired models. Although $D$-term inflation model has the excellent property that it is free from the so-called $\eta$- problem, two serious…
We explore the mechanics of inflation in simplified extra-dimensional models involving an inflaton interacting with the Einstein-Maxwell system in two extra dimensions. The models are Goldilocks-like in that they are just complicated enough…
Fluxbrane inflation is a stringy version of D-term inflation in which two fluxed D7-branes move towards each other until their (relative) gauge flux annihilates. Compared to brane-antibrane inflation, the leading-order inflationary…
We study the quantum fluctuations of scalar fields with a variable effective mass during an inflationary phase. We consider the situation where the effective mass depends on a background scalar field, which evolves during inflation from…
We investigate the possibility of preheating in hybrid inflation. This scenario involves at least two scalar fields, the inflaton field $\phi$, and the symmetry breaking field $\sigma$. We found that the behavior of these fields after…
The BICEP2 observations, if confirmed, point to a high scale of inflation and large field excursions during the inflationary era. Non-compact string moduli spaces are a suggestive setting for these phenomena. While unlikely to be described…
With the growing consensus on simple power law inflation models not being favored by the PLANCK observation, dynamics for the non-standard form of the inflaton potential gain significant interest in the recent past. In this paper, we…