10 research outputs found
Rolling Tachyon in Brane World Cosmology from Superstring Field Theory
The pressureless tachyonic matter recently found in superstring field theory
has an over-abundance problem in cosmology. We argue that this problem is
naturally solved in the brane inflationary scenario if almost all of the
tachyon energy is drained (via its coupling to the inflaton and matter fields)
to heating the universe, while the rest of the tachyon energy goes to a network
of cosmic strings (lower-dimensional BPS D-branes) produced during the tachyon
rolling at the end of inflation.Comment: 4 pages, one figure. This version quantifies constraints on various
phenomenological models for tachyon deca
On the Initial Conditions for Brane Inflation
String theory gives rise to various mechanisms to generate primordial
inflation, of which ``brane inflation'' is one of the most widely considered.
In this scenario, inflation takes place while two branes are approaching each
other, and the modulus field representing the separation between the branes
plays the role of the inflaton field. We study the phase space of initial
conditions which can lead to a sufficiently long period of cosmological
inflation, and find that taking into account the possibility of nonvanishing
initial momentum can significantly change the degree of fine tuning of the
required initial conditions.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure
An Inflationary Model in String Theory
We construct a model of inflation in string theory after carefully taking
into account moduli stabilization. The setting is a warped compactification of
Type IIB string theory in the presence of D3 and anti-D3-branes. The inflaton
is the position of a D3-brane in the internal space. By suitably adjusting
fluxes and the location of symmetrically placed anti-D3-branes, we show that at
a point of enhanced symmetry, the inflaton potential V can have a broad
maximum, satisfying the condition V''/V << 1 in Planck units. On starting close
to the top of this potential the slow-roll conditions can be met. Observational
constraints impose significant restrictions. As a first pass we show that these
can be satisfied and determine the important scales in the compactification to
within an order of magnitude. One robust feature is that the scale of inflation
is low, H = O(10^{10}) GeV. Removing the observational constraints makes it
much easier to construct a slow-roll inflationary model. Generalizations and
consequences including the possibility of eternal inflation are also discussed.
A more careful study, including explicit constructions of the model in string
theory, is left for the future.Comment: 27 pages, LaTeX, 1 eps figure. v2: references adde
D3/D7 Inflationary Model and M-theory
A proposal is made for a cosmological D3/D7 model with a constant magnetic
flux along the D7 world-volume. It describes an N=2 gauge model with
Fayet-Iliopoulos terms and the potential of the hybrid P-term inflation. The
motion of the D3-brane towards D7 in a phase with spontaneously broken
supersymmetry provides a period of slow-roll inflation in the de Sitter valley,
the role of the inflaton being played by the distance between D3 and D7-branes.
After tachyon condensation a supersymmetric ground state is formed: a D3/D7
bound state corresponding to an Abelian non-linear (non-commutative) instanton.
In this model the existence of a non-vanishing cosmological constant is
associated with the resolution of the instanton singularity. We discuss a
possible embedding of this model into a compactified M-theory setup.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures, LaTeX; v2, minor typos corrected, one reference
adde
The Leptonic Higgs as a Messenger of Dark Matter
We propose that the leptonic cosmic ray signals seen by PAMELA and ATIC
result from the annihilation or decay of dark matter particles via states of a
leptonic Higgs doublet to leptons, linking cosmic ray signals of dark
matter to LHC signals of the Higgs sector. The states of the leptonic Higgs
doublet are lighter than about 200 GeV, yielding large and
event rates at the LHC. Simple models are
given for the dark matter particle and its interactions with the leptonic
Higgs, for cosmic ray signals arising from both annihilations and decays in the
galactic halo. For the case of annihilations, cosmic photon and neutrino
signals are on the verge of discovery.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figures, minor typos corrected, references adde
de Sitter String Vacua from Supersymmetric D-terms
We propose a new mechanism for obtaining de Sitter vacua in type IIB string
theory compactified on (orientifolded) Calabi-Yau manifolds similar to those
recently studied by Kachru, Kallosh, Linde and Trivedi (KKLT). dS vacuum
appears in KKLT model after uplifting an AdS vacuum by adding an anti-D3-brane,
which explicitly breaks supersymmetry. We accomplish the same goal by adding
fluxes of gauge fields within the D7-branes, which induce a D-term potential in
the effective 4D action. In this way we obtain dS space as a spontaneously
broken vacuum from a purely supersymmetric 4D action. We argue that our
approach can be directly extended to heterotic string vacua, with the dilaton
potential obtained from a combination of gaugino condensation and the D-terms
generated by anomalous U(1) gauge groups.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur
Solitonic D-branes and brane annihilation
We point out some intriguing analogies between field theoretic solitons
(topological defects) and D-branes. Annihilating soliton-antisoliton pairs can
produce stable solitons of lower dimensionality. Solitons that localize
massless gauge fields in their world volume automatically imply the existence
of open flux tubes ending on them and closed flux tubes propagating in the
bulk. We discuss some aspects of this localization on explicit examples of
unstable wall-anti-wall systems. The annihilation of these walls can be
described in terms of tachyon condensation which renders the world-volume gauge
field non-dynamical. During this condensation the world volume gauge fields
(open string states) are resonantly excited. These can later decay into closed
strings, or get squeezed into a network flux tubes similar to a network of
cosmic strings formed at a cosmological phase transition. Although, as in the
-brane case, perturbatively one can find exact time-dependent solutions,
when the energy of the system stays localized in the plane of the original
soliton, such solutions are unstable with respect to decay into open and closed
string states. Thus, when a pair of such walls annihilates, the energy is
carried away (at least) by closed string excitations (``glueballs''), which are
the lowest energy excitations about the bulk vacuum. Suggested analogies can be
useful for the understanding of the complicated D-brane dynamics and of the
production of topological defects and reheating during brane collision in the
early universe.Comment: a typo correcte
Investigating Gamma-Ray Lines from Dark Matter with Future Observatories
We study the prospects for studying line features in gamma-ray spectra with
upcoming gamma-ray experiments, such as HESS-II, the Cherenkov Telescope Array
(CTA), and the GAMMA-400 satellite. As an example we use the narrow feature at
130 GeV seen in public data from the Fermi-LAT satellite. We found that all
three experiments should be able to confidently confirm or rule out the
presence of this 130 GeV feature. If it is real, it should be confirmed with a
confidence level higher than 5 sigma. Assuming it to be a spectral signature of
dark matter origin, GAMMA-400, thanks to a projected energy resolution of about
1.5% at 100 GeV, should also be able to resolve both the \gamma\gamma-line and
a corresponding Z\gamma- or H\gamma-feature, if the corresponding branching
ratio is comparable to that into two photons. It will also allow to distinguish
between a gamma-ray line and the similar feature resulting from internal
bremsstrahlung photons.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl
Decaying vs Annihilating Dark Matter in Light of a Tentative Gamma-Ray Line
Recently reported tentative evidence for a gamma-ray line in the Fermi-LAT
data is of great potential interest for identifying the nature of dark matter.
We compare the implications for decaying and annihilating dark matter taking
the constraints from continuum gamma-rays, antiproton flux and morphology of
the excess into account. We find that higgsino and wino dark matter are
excluded, also for nonthermal production. Generically, the continuum gamma-ray
flux severely constrains annihilating dark matter. Consistency of decaying dark
matter with the spatial distribution of the Fermi-LAT excess would require an
enhancement of the dark matter density near the Galactic center.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figures; v2: typo in appendix correcte