2010/01/31 by Brian Greene, Daniel Kabat, Janna Levin +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.10.036
published as Phys.Lett.B694:485-490,2011 · 21 pages, LaTeX, 2 pdf figures. v2: additional references. v3: added comments on moduli stabilization
openalex publication_date 2010/10/21 · arxiv created 2010/10/25 · arxiv updated 2011/06/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
The universe may have extra spatial dimensions with large volume that we cannot perceive because the energy required to excite modes in the extra directions is too high. Many examples are known of manifolds with a large volume and a large mass gap. These compactifications can help explain the weakness of four-dimensional gravity and, as we show here, they also have the capacity to produce reasonable potentials for an inflaton field. Modeling the inflaton as a bulk scalar field, it becomes very weakly coupled in four dimensions and this enables us to build phenomenologically acceptable inflationary models with tunings at the few per mil level. We speculate on dark matter candidates and the possibility of braneless models in this setting.