Related papers: Axion perturbation spectra in string cosmologies
We study general class of small-field axion inflations which are the mixture of polynomial and sinusoidal functions suggested by the natural and axion monodromy inflations. The axion decay constants leading to the successful axion…
We investigate a string-inspired dark energy scenario featuring a scalar field with a coupling to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant. Such coupling can trigger the onset of late dark energy domination after a scaling matter era. The universe may…
Cold dark matter axions produced in the post-inflationary Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking scenario serve as clear targets for their experimental detection, since it is in principle possible to give a sharp prediction for their mass once we…
The decay constant of the QCD axion is required by observation to be small compared to the Planck scale. In theories of "natural inflation," and certain proposed anthropic solutions of the cosmological constant problem, it would be…
We analyze the spectrum of axions radiated from collapse of domain walls, which have received less attention in the literature. The evolution of topological defects related to the axion models is investigated by performing field-theoretic…
If the symmetry breaking leading to the origin of the axion dark matter field occurs after the end of inflation and is never restored, then overdensities in the axion field collapse to form dense objects known in the literature as axion…
We study cosmological perturbations in models with a single non-local scalar field originating from the string field theory description of the rolling tachyon dynamics. We construct the equation for the energy density perturbations of the…
A generic low-energy prediction of string theory is the existence of a large collection of axions, commonly known as a string axiverse. Axions also have a natural cosmological production mechanism, vacuum misalignment, making them…
We present a novel theory of the very early universe which addresses the traditional horizon and flatness problems of big bang cosmology and predicts a scale invariant spectrum of perturbations. Unlike inflation, this scenario requires no…
The spectrum of stable electrically and magnetically charged supersymmetric particles can change discontinuously due to the decay of these particles as the vacuum on the Coulomb branch is varied. We show that this decay process is well…
String theories suggest the existence of a plethora of axion-like fields with masses spread over a huge number of decades. Here we show that these ideas lend themselves to a model of quintessence with no super-Planckian field excursions and…
Certain inflationary models can feature periods of preheating - an era preceding reheating during which parametric resonance triggers an exponential production of bosons. This non-perturbative process can have significant impact on the…
Superstring theories are very promising theoretically, but the enormous landscape of string vacua and the (likely) very large underlying string scale imply that they may never be tested directly. Nevertheless, concrete constructions…
Ekpyrotic bouncing cosmologies have been proposed as alternatives to inflation. In these scenarios, the universe is smoothed and flattened during a period of slow contraction preceding the bounce while quantum fluctuations generate nearly…
We study the small scale structure of axion dark matter in the post-inflationary scenario, which predicts the formation of low-mass, high-density clumps of gravitationally bound axions called axion miniclusters. To this end, we follow…
We analyze all individual cosmic strings of various lengths in a large ensemble of the global cosmic string networks in the post-inflationary scenario, obtained from numerical simulations on a discrete lattice with $N^3 = 4096^3$. A strong…
We motivate a relation between dark energy and the scale of new physics in weakly coupled string theory. This mixing between infrared and ultraviolet physics leads to a unique corner for real-world phenomenology: barring fine-tunings, we…
We study the system of interacting axions and magnetic fields in the early universe after the quantum chromodynamics phase transition, when axions acquire masses. Both axions and magnetic fields are supposed to be spatially inhomogeneous.…
A recently proposed mechanism for large-scale structure in string cosmology --based on massless axionic seeds-- is further analyzed and extended to the acoustic-peak region. Existence, structure, and normalization of the peaks turn out to…
We compute spectra of particles produced during a dilaton-driven kinetic inflation phase within string cosmology models. The resulting spectra depend on the parameters of the model and on the type of particle and are quite varied, some…