Accelerating Cosmologies and Inflation from M/Superstring Theories

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent progress in deriving accelerating cosmologies and inflationary models from higher-dimensional superstring and M-theory frameworks, highlighting challenges and solutions such as S-branes and higher-order corrections.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of methods to achieve inflation from superstring and M-theory, including novel solutions like S-branes and the role of higher-order corrections.

Findings

S-branes can produce accelerating cosmologies

Higher-order corrections enable inflationary solutions

Challenges exist in deriving inflation from supergravity theories

Abstract

We review the recent developments in obtaining accelerating cosmologies and/or inflation from higher-dimensional gravitational theories, in particular superstring theories in ten dimensions and M-theory in eleven dimensions. We first discuss why it is difficult to obtain inflationary behavior in the effective low-energy theories of superstring/M-theory, i. e. supergravity theories. We then summarize interesting solutions including S-branes that give rise to accelerating cosmologies and inflationary solutions in M-theory with higher order corrections. Other approaches to inflation in the string context are also briefly discussed.