String Loop Moduli Stabilisation and Cosmology in IIB Flux Compactifications

TL;DR

This thesis explores moduli stabilisation in type IIB flux compactifications, emphasizing string loop corrections' role in achieving full stabilisation and constructing inflationary models with observable gravitational waves.

Contribution

It derives topological conditions for the LARGE Volume Scenario and analyzes string loop corrections' impact on moduli stabilisation and cosmological inflation.

Findings

String loop corrections are crucial for full moduli stabilisation.

K3-fibrations naturally lead to inflationary models predicting observable gravity waves.

The decompactification temperature constrains the internal volume in the LARGE Volume Scenario.

Abstract

This article represents the author's PhD thesis which is focused on moduli stabilisation in type IIB Calabi-Yau flux compactifications and its applications to cosmology. I derive the topological conditions on an arbitrary Calabi-Yau to give rise to the very promising LARGE Volume Scenario. After a systematic study of the behaviour of string loop corrections for general type IIB compactifications, I show how they play a crucial role to achieve full moduli stabilisation. I then apply these results to cosmology showing how, in the case of K3-fibrations, string loop corrections give rise naturally to an inflationary model which predicts observable gravity waves. Finally I compute the decompactification temperature for the LARGE Volume Scenario due to thermal effects and work out a cosmological constraint on the value of the internal volume.