Informal Pizza Seminar

Multibrane Inflation

Jim Cline

McGill University

I will review the KKLMMT warped compactification scenario for brane-antibrane inflation in string theory, with emphasis on the problem of having to fine-tune the potential to get sufficient inflation. I will show how generalizing to multiple branes driving inflation can solve this fine tuning problem by a novel mechanism, where tunneling of some of the branes from a metastable minimum dynamically leads to a nearly flat potential. Predictions for the cosmic microwave background will be shown, with a possible test for falsifying the model.