Quintessence Restrictions on Negative Power and Condensate Potentials

We study the cosmological evolution of scalar fields that arise from a phase transition at some energy scale \Lm_c. We focus on negative power potentials given by V=c\Lm_c^{4+n}\phi^{-n} and restrict the cosmological viable values of \Lm_c and $n$. We make a complete analysis of $V$ and impose $SN1a$ conditions on the different cosmological parameters. The cosmological observations ruled out models where the scalar field has reached its attractor solution. For models where this is not the case, the analytic approximated solutions are not good enough to determine whether a specific model is phenomenologically viable or not and the full differential equations must be numerically solved. The results are not fine tuned since a change of 45% on the initial conditions does not spoil the final results. We also determine the values of $N_c, N_f$ that give a condensation scale \Lm_c consistent with gauge coupling unification, leaving only four models that satisfy unification and SN1a constraints.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX, 8 Figures. Minor changes in text, a discussion on initial conditions added (accepted in Phys.Rev.D

Comments on orientifold projection in the conifold and SO x USp duality cascade

We study the O3-plane in the conifold. On the D3-brane world-volume we obtain SO x USp gauge theory that exhibits a duality cascade phenomenon. The orientifold projection is determined on the type IIB string side, and corresponds to that of O4-plane on the dual type IIA side. We show that SUGRA solutions of Klebanov-Tseytlin and Klebanov-Strassler survive under the projection. We also investigate the orientifold projection in the generalized conifolds, and verify desired features of the O4-projection in the type IIA picture.Comment: 1+27 pages, 9 figures, references added; version to appear in Phys. Rev.