Joint cosmology seminar at Tufts:

Tuesday, November 14, 2017, 2:30 pm
574 Boston Ave, Room 316
Tufts University
Refreshments at 2:00 outside room 304

Anti-Brane Induced Inflation

Evan McDonough
Brown

Abstract:

Anti-branes are a widely used tool in constructing our universe in string theory, notably used for generating a small positive cosmological constant. In this talk, I will show how the supergravity description of anti-branes naturally leads to a period of inflation, occurring due to the backreaction of an anti-brane on the string theory bulk geometry. In this context, a would-be ``eta-problem'' in fact becomes an ``eta-solution,'' with inflation being generated by perturbative corrections to the Kahler potential. To cover this broad topic I will review supersymmetry and its breaking in string theory and supergravity, the physics of anti-branes, and the interplay of all of this with ```moduli stabilization''. Talk based on 1609.00364, 1601.03409, and 1712.xxxx.