activity
20202026
most citedHeterotic de Sitter Beyond Modular Symmetry

47 citations · 148 across the 14 of their papers we have counts for

collaborators

15 papers

hep-th2026

Automorphic Structures of Heterotic Vacua

Jacob M. Leedom, Nicole Righi, Alexander Westphal

We study moduli stabilization in 4D effective field theories with Sp(4,) self-duality inspired by heterotic orbifold compactifications with Wilson lines. The target-spa…

hep-ph2026

The COSMIC WISPers White Paper: The physics case for Weakly Interacting Slim Particles

Ariel Arza, Deniz Aybas, Shyam Balaji +124

Axions and other very weakly interacting slim particles (WISPs), with masses below 1 GeV, arise naturally in many extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. In particula…

hep-ph2026★ 1 cited

Axions at the meV Crossroads: Theory, Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Experiments

Michele Cicoli, Francesco D'Eramo, Luca Di Luzio +18

The meV mass range has emerged as a focal point in axion physics, where advances in theory, cosmology, astrophysics, and experimental techniques converge. Axions in this mass range…

hep-ph2025

Exploring the Dark Universe: A European Strategy for Axions and other WISPs Discovery

Deniz Aybas, Francesca Calore, Michele Cicoli +17

Axions and other very weakly interacting slim (with 1 GeV) particles (WISPs) are a common feature of several extensions of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The search…

hep-th2025

On (de Sitter) Vacua in Heterotic String Theory

Nicole Righi

Heterotic toroidal orbifolds are a powerful framework for testing our understanding of string vacua. We review recent advances in heterotic model building, from constructing new va…

hep-th2024★ 1 cited

Fuzzy Axions and Associated Relics

Elijah Sheridan, Federico Carta, Naomi Gendler +6

We study fuzzy axion dark matter in type IIB string theory, for axions descending from the Ramond-Ramond four-form in compactifications on orientifolds of Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces.…

hep-th2024

Preheating Axions in String Cosmology

Jacob M. Leedom, Margherita Putti, Nicole Righi +1

Certain inflationary models can feature periods of preheating - an era preceding reheating during which parametric resonance triggers an exponential production of bosons. This non-…

hep-th2024

Open Strings and Heterotic Instantons

Rafael Álvarez-García, Christian Kneißl, Jacob M. Leedom +1

Motivated by closed string perturbation theory arguments by S. Shenker, we consider non-perturbative effects of characteristic strength , with th…

hep-th2024★ 1 cited

Axion Theory and Model Building

Kiwoon Choi, Nicole Righi

Axions are light pseudoscalar bosons postulated with many motivations in particle physics and cosmology, including the strong CP problem and the dark matter in our Universe. In thi…

hep-th2022★ 47 cited

Heterotic de Sitter Beyond Modular Symmetry

Jacob M. Leedom, Nicole Righi, Alexander Westphal

We study the vacua of heterotic toroidal orbifolds using effective theories consisting of an overall Kähler modulus, the dilaton, and non-perturbative corrections to both the…

hep-th2022★ 9 cited

Axionic Festina Lente

Veronica Guidetti, Nicole Righi, Victoria Venken +1

The swampland conjecture known as Festina Lente (FL) imposes a lower bound on the mass of all charged particles in a quasi-de Sitter space. In this paper, we propose the aFL (axion…

hep-th2021★ 45 cited

Fuzzy Dark Matter Candidates from String Theory

Michele Cicoli, Veronica Guidetti, Nicole Righi +1

String theory has been claimed to give rise to natural fuzzy dark matter candidates in the form of ultralight axions. In this paper we revisit this claim by a detailed study of how…

hep-th2021★ 17 cited

Thraxions: Towards Full String Models

Federico Carta, Alessandro Mininno, Nicole Righi +1

We elucidate various aspects of the physics of thraxions, ultra-light axions arising at Klebanov-Strassler multi-throats in the compactification space of IIB superstring theory. We…

hep-th2021★ 15 cited

Gopakumar-Vafa Hierarchies in Winding Inflation and Uplifts

Federico Carta, Alessandro Mininno, Nicole Righi +1

We propose a combined mechanism to realize both winding inflation and de Sitter uplifts. We realize the necessary structure of competing terms in the scalar potential not via tunin…

hep-th2020★ 12 cited

Harmonic Hybrid Inflation

Federico Carta, Nicole Righi, Yvette Welling +1

We present a mechanism for realizing hybrid inflation using two axion fields with a purely non-perturbatively generated scalar potential. The structure of scalar potential is highl…