Inflationary cosmology in the central region of String/M-theory moduli space

Abstract

The "central" region of moduli space of M- and string theories is where the string coupling is about unity and the volume of compact dimensions is about the string volume. Here we argue that in this region the non-perturbative potential which is suggested by membrane instanton effects has the correct scaling and shape to allow for enough slow-roll inflation, and to produce the correct amplitude of CMB anisotropies. Thus, the well known theoretical obstacles for achieving viable slow-roll inflation in the framework of perturbative string theory are overcome. Limited knowledge of some generic properties of the induced potential is sufficient to determine the simplest type of consistent inflationary model and its predictions about the spectrum of cosmic microwave background anisotropies: a red spectrum of scalar perturbations, and negligible amount of tensor perturbations.

9 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (3)

• Non-Perturbative Superpotentials from Membrane Instantons in Heterotic M-Theory
• Instabilities in heterotic M-theory induced by open membrane instantons
• Moduli stabilization and supersymmetry breaking in effective theories of strings

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• The Landscape of String Theory and The Wave Function of the Universe
• Models of Modular Inflation and Their Phenomenological Consequences
• Trapped Quintessential Inflation in the context of Flux Compactifications
• Modular inflation and the orthogonal axion as curvaton
• Inflation at the TeV scale with a PNGB curvaton
• Reducing the spectral index in F-term hybrid inflation through a complementary modular inflation
• Standard-smooth hybrid inflation
• M-Theory Moduli Space and Cosmology
• Quintessential inflation and nonlinear effects of the tachyonic trap mechanism
• A maximal-entropy initial state of the Universe as a microscopic description of inflation
• Phenomenology and Cosmology of Supersymmetric Grand Unified Theories