We study the CMB observables in axion monodromy inflation. These well-motivated scenarios for inflation in string theory have monomial potentials over super-Planckian field ranges, with superimposed sinusoidal modulations from instanton effects. Such periodic modulations of the potential can drive resonant enhancements of the correlation functions of cosmological perturbations, with characteristic modulations of the amplitude as a function of wavenumber. We give an analytical result for the scalar power spectrum in this class of models, and we determine the limits that present data places on the amplitude and frequency of modulations. Then, incorporating an improved understanding of the realization of axion monodromy inflation in string theory, we perform a careful study of microphysical constraints in this scenario. We find that detectable modulations of the scalar power spectrum are commonplace in wellcontrolled examples, while resonant contributions to the bispectrum are undetectable in some classes of examples and detectable in others. We conclude that resonant contributions to the spectrum and bispectrum are a characteristic signature of axion monodromy inflation that, in favorable cases, could be detected in near-future experiments.arXiv:0907.2916v1 [hep-th]

Partonic cross sections for the production of massive objects in hadronic collisions receive large corrections when the invariant mass of the initial-state partons is just above the production threshold. Since typically the center-of-mass energy of the hadronic collision is much higher than the mass of the heavy objects, it is not obvious that these contributions translate into large corrections to the hadronic cross section. Using a recent approach to threshold resummation based on effective field theory, we quantify to which extent the fall-off of the parton densities at high x leads to a dynamical enhancement of the partonic threshold region. With the example of Drell-Yan production, we study the emergence of an effective physical scale characterizing the soft emissions in the process. We derive compact analytical expressions for the resummed Drell-Yan cross section and rapidity distribution directly in momentum space. They are free of Landau-pole singularities and are trivially matched onto fixed-order perturbative calculations. Evaluating the resummed cross sections at NNNLL order and matching onto NNLO fixed-order calculations, we perform a detailed numerical analysis of the cross section and rapidity distribution in pp collisions.

We study the six-field dynamics of D3-brane inflation for a general scalar potential on the conifold, finding simple, universal behavior. We numerically evolve the equations of motion for an ensemble of more than 7 · 10 7 realizations, drawing the coefficients in the scalar potential from statistical distributions whose detailed properties have demonstrably small effects on our results. When prolonged inflation occurs, it has a characteristic form: the D3-brane initially moves rapidly in the angular directions, spirals down to an inflection point in the potential, and settles into single-field inflation. The probability of N e e-folds of inflation is a power law, P (N e ) ∝ N −3 e , and we derive the same exponent from a simple analytical model. The success of inflation is relatively insensitive to the initial conditions: we find attractor behavior in the angular directions, and the D3-brane can begin far above the inflection point without overshooting. In favorable regions of the parameter space, models yielding 60 e-folds of expansion arise approximately once in 10 3 trials. Realizations that are effectively single-field and give rise to a primordial spectrum of fluctuations consistent with WMAP, for which at least 120 e-folds are required, arise approximately once in 10 5 trials. The emergence of robust predictions from a six-field potential with hundreds of terms invites an analytic approach to multifield inflation.