Late D-term Inflation and the Cosmological Moduli Problem in TeV Scale Strings

We show that a short period of late D-term inflation can solve the cosmological moduli (radion) problem of (asymmetric) inflation at the TeV scale. Late inflation happens after the large compact dimensions are stabilized which is crucial for obtaining the extremely small Hubble constant and inflaton mass required.Comment: 12 pages in phyzzx.tex, one reference adde

Universal Counting of Black Hole Entropy by Strings on the Stretched Horizon

We show that the entropy of any black object in any dimension can be understood as the entropy of a highly excited string on the stretched horizon. The string has a gravitationally renormalized tension due to the large redshift near the horizon. The Hawking temperature is given by the Hagedorn temperature of the string. As examples, we consider black holes with one (black p-branes) or two charges, Reissner-Nordstrom black holes and the BTZ black hole in addition to Schwarzschild black holes. We show that the vanishing and nonvanishing extremal entropies can be obtained as smooth limits of the near-extreme cases.Comment: 21 pages in phyzzx.tex, numerous minor changes, dyonic string added as an example, one reference adde