arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Amanda Weltman.
Stringy effects on vacuum transitions are shown to include surprisingly large decay rates through very high potential barriers. This simple, yet counter-intuitive result will drastically modify the measure on the landscape of string vacua.
Low energy effective actions arising from string theory typically contain many scalar fields, some with a very complicated potential and others with no potential at all. The evolution of these scalars is of great interest. Their late time values have a direct impact on low energy observables, while their early universe dynamics can potentially source inflation or adversely affect big bang nucleosynthesis. Recently, classical and quantum methods for fixing the values of these scalars have been introduced. The purpose of this work is to explore moduli dynamics in light of these stabilization mechanisms. In particular, we explore a truncated low energy effective action that models the neighborhood of special points (or more generally loci) in moduli space, such as conifold points, where extra massless degrees of freedom arise. We find that the dynamics has a surprisingly rich structure - including the appearance of chaos - and we find a viable mechanism for trapping some of the moduli.
We study the effects of $ α'$ corrections to the Kähler potential on volume stabilisation and racetrack inflation. In a region where classical supergravity analysis is justified, stringy corrections can nevertheless be relevant for correctly analyzing moduli stabilisation and the onset of inflation.
We show that the chameleon scalar field can drive the current phase of cosmic acceleration for a large class of scalar potentials that are also consistent with local tests of gravity. These provide explicit realizations of a quintessence model where the quintessence scalar field couples directly to baryons and dark matter with gravitational strength. We analyze the cosmological evolution of the chameleon field and show the existence of an attractor solution with the chameleon following the minimum of its effective potential. For a wide range of initial conditions, spanning many orders of magnitude in initial chameleon energy density, the attractor is reached before nucleosynthesis. Surprisingly, the range of allowed initial conditions leading to a successful cosmology is wider than in normal quintessence. We discuss applications to the cyclic model of the universe and show how the chameleon mechanism weakens some of the constraints on cyclic potentials.
We present a novel scenario where a scalar field acquires a mass which depends on the local matter density: the field is massive on Earth, where the density is high, but is essentially free in the solar system, where the density is low. All existing tests of gravity are satisfied. We predict that near-future satellite experiments could measure an effective Newton's constant in space different than that on Earth, as well as violations of the equivalence principle stronger than currently allowed by laboratory experiments.
The evidence for the accelerated expansion of the universe and the time-dependence of the fine-structure constant suggests the existence of at least one scalar field with a mass of order H_0. If such a field exists, then it is generally assumed that its coupling to matter must be tuned to unnaturally small values in order to satisfy the tests of the Equivalence Principle (EP). In this paper, we present an alternative explanation which allows scalar fields to evolve cosmologically while having couplings to matter of order unity. In our scenario, the mass of the fields depends on the local matter density: the interaction range is typically of order 1 mm on Earth (where the density is high) and of order 10-10^4 AU in the solar system (where the density is low). All current bounds from tests of General Relativity are satisfied. Nevertheless, we predict that near-future experiments that will test gravity in space will measure an effective Newton's constant different by order unity from that on Earth, as well as EP violations stronger than currently allowed by laboratory experiments. Such outcomes would constitute a smoking gun for our scenario.