Energy inequalities for cutoff functions and some applications

We consider a metric measure space with a local regular Dirichlet form. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for upper heat kernel bounds with sub-diffusive space-time exponent to hold. This characterization is stable under rough isometries, that is it is preserved under bounded perturbations of the Dirichlet form. Further, we give a criterion for stochastic completeness in terms of a Sobolev inequality for cutoff functions. As an example we show that this criterion applies to an anomalous diffusion on a geodesically incomplete fractal space, where the well-established criterion in terms of volume growth fails

On the Ernst electro-vacuum equations and ergosurfaces

The question of smoothness at the ergosurface of the space-time metric constructed out of solutions (E,phi) of the Ernst electro-vacuum equations is considered. We prove smoothness of those ergosurfaces at which Re(E) provides the dominant contribution to f=-(Re(E)+|phi|^2) at the zero-level-set of f. Some partial results are obtained in the remaining cases: in particular we give examples of leading-order solutions with singular isolated "ergocircles".Comment: 15 pages, no figures, minor change

Large-scale disasters and the insurance industry

We investigate the effect of the 20 largest – in terms of insured losses – man-made or natural disasters on the insurance industry. We show via an event study that insurance markets worldwide are quite resilient to unexpected losses to capital and are even outperforming the general market subsequent to great disasters. --disaster,insurance industry,event-study

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