Related papers: On Graceful Exit in String Cosmology with Pre-Big …
The pre-big-bang cosmology inspired by superstring theories has been suggested as an alternative to slow-roll inflation. We analyze, in both the Jordan and Einstein frames, the effect of spatial curvature on this scenario and show that too…
We study cosmologies based on low-energy effective string theory with higher-order string corrections to a tree-level action and with a modulus scalar field (dilaton or compactification modulus). In the presence of such corrections it is…
The pre--big bang cosmological scenario is studied within the context of the Brans--Dicke theory of gravity. An epoch of superinflationary expansion may occur in the pre--big bang phase of the Universe's history in a certain region of…
D-branes are fundamental in all scenarios where there are large extra dimensions and the string scale is much smaller than the four-dimensional Planck mass. We show that this current picture leads to a new approach to string cosmology where…
An inhomogeneous version of pre--Big Bang cosmology emerges, within string theory, from quite generic initial conditions, provided they lie deeply inside the weak-coupling, low-curvature regime. Large-scale homogeneity, flatness, and…
We study the cosmological evolution of a type-0 string theory by employing non-criticality, which may be induced by fluctuations of the D3 brane worlds. We check the consistency of the approach to O(alpha ') in the corresponding…
One of the fundamental challenges in string theory is to derive realistic four-dimensional cosmological backgrounds from it despite strict consistency conditions that constrain its possible low-energy backgrounds. In this work, we focus on…
We study the graceful exit problem and the role of the stress-energy-momentum tensors in the two-dimensional string cosmology. The one-loop quantum correction of conformal fields is incorporated in the arbitrary large $N$ limit to ensure…
`Old' String Theory is a theory of one-dimensional extended objects, whose vibrations correspond to excitations of various target-space field modes including gravity. In these lectures I will give an introduction to low-energy Effective…
We present a minimal model for the Universe evolution fully extracted from effective String Theory. By linking this model with a minimal but well established observational information, we prove that it gives realistic predictions on early…
String theory can (in principle) describe gravity at all curvature scales, and can be applied to cosmology to look back in time beyond the Planck epoch. The duality symmetries of string theory suggest a cosmological picture in which the…
We introduce a Wheeler-De Witt approach to quantum cosmology based on the low-energy string effective action, with an effective dilaton potential included to account for non-perturbative effects and, possibly, higher-order corrections. We…
We compute the amount of inflation required to solve the horizon problem of cosmology in the pre-big-bang scenario. First we give a quick overview of string cosmology as developed by Veneziano and collaborators. Then we show that the amount…
Inflation is now a basic ingredient of the modern cosmology. After reviewing the basic characteristics of inflation, we briefly discuss inflation in string and brane theories, focusing on the problem of the exit from inflation in these…
We consider the dynamics of Bianchi A scalar field models which undergo inflation. The main question is under which conditions does inflation come to an end and is succeeded by a decelerated epoch. This so-called "graceful exit" from…
A review is attempted of physical motivations, theoretical and phenomenological aspects, as well as outstanding problems, of the pre-big bang scenario in string cosmology.
We briefly review three aspects of string cosmology: (1) the ``stochastic'' approach to the pre-big bang scenario, (2) the presence of chaos in the generic cosmological solutions of the tree-level low-energy effective actions coming out of…
The beautiful scenario of pre-big-bang cosmology is appealling not only because it is more or less derived from string theory, but also because it separates clearly the problem of the initial conditions for the universe from that of high…
We show that, in the presence of a string gas, simple higher-derivative modifications to the effective action for gravity can lead to bouncing and cyclic cosmological models. The modifications bound the expansion rate and avoid…
We discuss a new mechanism of obtaining a period of cosmological inflation in the context of string theory. This mechanism is based on embedded defects which form dynamically on higher dimensional D-branes. Such defects generate topological…