Talks (non-conference)

Since the pioneering work of Pestun, localization techniques have been successfully applied to computing protected observables in theories with varying amounts of supersymmetry and in diverse dimensions and backgrounds. For theories with N=1 supersymmetry in four dimensions, most of the studies have focused on closed compact spaces, while only few results for manifolds with boundaries are available, mostly in two and three dimensions. [...]

The paradigm of cosmic inflation explains our observations of the cosmic microwave background spectacularly well. To proceed in the quest of pinning down the particle physics model behind this very early phase of the Universe, multi-wavelength observations of the power spectra of the anisotropies generated during cosmic inflation are crucial. [...]

I will discuss aspects of de Sitter space and inflation models of inflation in the context of string theory. We begin by reviewing four-dimensional dS space. [...]

It is notoriously difficult to engineer successful models of inflation and late time expansion in string theory. We discuss what are generic difficulties encountered in string model building and emphasize the particular role played by the KKLT proposal in the recent debate surrounding the "no-dS conjecture". [...]

The existence of Dark Matter (DM) is observationally well established due to its gravitational interactions. If, in addition, DM is a particle which has interactions with the SM, complementarity (i.e. [...]