Cosmological Dynamics of Scalar Fields in String-Motivated Models

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Ivonne Zavala (Swansea U.)
• Monday 13 October 2025, 13:00-14:00
• CMS, Pav. B, CTC Common Room (B1.19) [Potter Room].

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Gonzalo Villa.

Scalar fields are ubiquitous in string theory compactifications, arising both from geometric moduli and as descendants of higher-dimensional p-forms. In cosmology, they provide natural candidates to drive accelerated expansion, both during early (inflationary) and late (dark energy) time evolution of the Universe. In single-field models, scalar potentials are typically too steep to sustain slow-roll evolution. However, in multifield scenarios, accelerated expansion can occur even for steep potentials, when the scalar fields move along strongly non-geodesic trajectories in field space. Such dynamics not only enable inflation or dark energy but can also evade recent quantum gravity swampland constraints. In this talk, I will show how to extend the dynamical systems (DS) toolkit to include both kinetic and potential couplings between fields – features that naturally arise in string-theoretic constructions. Within this framework, I will present a compact and general expression for the non-geodesicity parameter, which offers a simple and transparent diagnostic of truly multifield evolution. I will also discuss connections with previous work on inflationary dynamics, where related mechanisms play a central role.

This talk is part of the Cosmology Lunch series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All CMS events
• CMS Events
• CMS, Pav. B, CTC Common Room (B1.19) [Potter Room]
• Cambridge Astronomy Talks
• Cosmology Lunch
• Cosmology lists
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• DAMTP info aggregator
• Interested Talks
• Kavli Institute for Cosmology Talk Lists
• Priscilla
• bld31

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.