High Energy Physics

I argue that all necessary ingredients for successful inflation are present in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). The potential for the supersymmetric flat directions (which can be viewed as moduli near points of enhanced symmetry) generically has metastable minima at large field values. An adjustment of soft supersymemtry breaking parameters results in a point where the first two derivatives of the potential vanish. One can then have more than 10^3 e-foldings of slow roll inflation with a Hubble rate ~ O(1-10) GeV in the vicinity of this point. The model has a robust prediction for the scalar spectral index: n_s \leq 0.93, which agrees with the current WMAP and LSS data within 2\sigma. It can be implemented purely within MSSM, or MSSM plus Dirac neutrinos. It has the unique feature of having a concrete and real connection to physics that can be observed in earthbound laboratories.

I will demonstrate how one can realize Cascade inflation in M-theory. Cascade inflation is a realization of assisted inflation which is driven by non-perturbative interactions of N M5-branes. Its power spectrum possesses three distinctive signatures: a decisive power suppression at small scales, oscillations around the scales that cross the horizon when the inflaton potential jumps and stepwise decrease in the scalar spectral index. All three properties result from features in the inflaton potential. The features in the inflaton potential are generated whenever two M5-branes collide with the boundaries. The derived small-scale power suppression serves as a possible explanation for the dearth of observed dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way halo. The oscillations, furthermore, allow to directly probe M-theory by measurements of the spectral index and to distinguish cascade inflation observationally from other string inflation models.

Studies of ${cal N}=4$ super Yang Mills operators with large R-charge have shown that, in the planar limit, the problem of computing their dimensions can be viewed as a certain spin chain. These spin chains have fundamental ``magnon\'\' excitations which obey a dispersion relation that is periodic in the momentum of the magnons. This result for the dispersion relation was also shown to hold at arbitrary \'t Hooft coupling. Here we identify these magnons on the string theory side and we show how to reconcile a periodic dispersion relation with the continuum worldsheet description. The crucial idea is that the momentum is interpreted in the string theory side as a certain geometrical angle. We use these results to compute the energy of a spinning string. We also show that the symmetries that determine the dispersion relation and that constrain the S-matrix are the same in the gauge theory and the string theory. We compute the overall S-matrix at large \'t Hooft coupling using the string description and we find that it agrees with an earlier conjecture. We also find an infinite number of two magnon bound states at strong coupling, while at weak coupling this number is finite.

In this talk I will discuss some aspects of graviton production by moving branes. After a brief introduction to braneworld cosmology I will focus on braneworlds in a five-dimensional bulk, where cosmological expansion is mimicked by motion through AdS_5. The moving brane acts naturally as a time-dependent boundary for the five-dimensional graviton (five-dimensional tensor perturbations) leading to graviton production out of quantum vacuum fluctuations. This effect is related to the so-called dynamical Casimir effect, i.e. the generation of real photons out of vacuum fluctuations of the quantized electromagnetic field in dynamical cavities. By applying the formalism used to study the dynamical Casimir effect I will show explicitly that the five-dimensional graviton reduces to the four-dimensional one in the late time approximation of such braneworlds. In the last part of the talk I will study a (toy) model where two branes approach each other in a radiation dominated phase, bounce off and move apart from each other afterwards. Thereby generation of massive gravitons takes place caused by the coupling of the Kaluza-Klein modes to the gravitational zero mode which exhibits a blue spectrum. At the end I will discuss possible applications of the formalism to more interesting scenarios (braneworld inflation etc).

At low energy and small curvature, general relativity has the form of an effective field theory. I will describe the structure of the effective field theory, and show how it can be used to calculate low energy quantum effects.

Geometric flows, especially the Ricci flow, have been used with considerable success in recent years to address the Poincare and Thurston conjectures for 3-manifolds. In this talk, I will briefly introduce these geometric flows, and describe how they appear in a completely different context in the physics of string theory. I will then outline how recently developed techniques in geometric flows could be used to address questions of importance in string theory.