Moving Five-Branes in Low-Energy Heterotic M-Theory

We construct cosmological solutions of four-dimensional effective heterotic M-theory with a moving five-brane and evolving dilaton and T modulus. It is shown that the five-brane generates a transition between two asymptotic rolling-radii solutions. Moreover, the five-brane motion always drives the solutions towards strong coupling asymptotically. We present an explicit example of a negative-time branch solution which ends in a brane collision accompanied by a small-instanton transition. The five-dimensional origin of some of our solutions is also discussed.Comment: 16 pages, Latex, 3 eps figure

Persistent accelerations disentangle Lagrangian turbulence

Particles in turbulence frequently encounter extreme accelerations between extended periods of quiescence. The occurrence of extreme events is closely related to the intermittent spatial distribution of intense flow structures such as vorticity filaments. This mixed history of flow conditions leads to very complex particle statistics with a pronounced scale dependence, which presents one of the major challenges on the way to a non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of turbulence. Here, we introduce the notion of persistent Lagrangian acceleration, quantified by the squared particle acceleration coarse-grained over a viscous time scale. Conditioning Lagrangian particle data from simulations on this coarse-grained acceleration, we find remarkably simple, close-to-Gaussian statistics for a range of Reynolds numbers. This opens the possibility to decompose the complex particle statistics into much simpler sub-ensembles. Based on this observation, we develop a comprehensive theoretical framework for Lagrangian single-particle statistics that captures the acceleration, velocity increments as well as single-particle dispersion

D7-Brane Chaotic Inflation

We analyze string-theoretic large-field inflation in the regime of spontaneously-broken supergravity with conventional moduli stabilization by fluxes and non-perturbative effects. The main ingredient is a shift-symmetric Kahler potential, supplemented by flux-induced shift symmetry breaking in the superpotential. The central technical observation is that all these features are present for D7-brane position moduli in Type IIB orientifolds, allowing for a realization of the axion monodromy proposal in a controlled string theory compactification. On the one hand, in the large complex structure regime the D7-brane position moduli inherit a shift symmetry from their mirror-dual Type IIA Wilson lines. On the other hand, the Type IIB flux superpotential generically breaks this shift symmetry and allows, by appealing to the large flux discretuum, to tune the relevant coefficients to be small. The shift-symmetric direction in D7-brane moduli space can then play the role of the inflaton: While the D7-brane circles a certain trajectory on the Calabi-Yau many times, the corresponding F-term energy density grows only very slowly, thanks to the above-mentioned tuning of the flux. Thus, the large-field inflationary trajectory can be realized in a regime where Kahler, complex structure and other brane moduli are stabilized in a conventional manner, as we demonstrate using the example of the Large Volume Scenario.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures; v2: references adde