As a first step towards inflation in genuinely F-theoretic setups, we propose a scenario where the inflaton is the relative position of two 7-branes on holomorphic 4-cycles. Non-supersymmetric gauge flux induces an attractive inter-brane potential. The latter is sufficiently flat in the supergravity regime of large volume moduli. Thus, in contrast to brane-antibrane inflation, fluxbrane inflation does not require warping. We calculate the inflaton potential both in the supergravity approximation and via an open-string oneloop computation on toroidal backgrounds. This leads us to propose a generalisation to genuine Calabi-Yau manifolds. We also comment on competing F -term effects. The end of inflation is marked by the condensation of tachyonic recombination fields between the 7-branes, triggering the formation of a bound state described as a stable extension along the 7-brane divisor. Hence our model fits in the framework of hybrid D-term inflation. We work out the main phenomenological properties of our D-term inflaton potential. In particular, our scenario of D7/D7 inflation avoids the familiar observational constraints associated with cosmic strings.

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We present the long-wavelength effective description of non-extremal spinning black D3-branes in flat space. Our setup is motivated by recent explorations of low energy dynamics on black brane world-volumes within the blackfold approach and its connections to the fluid/gravity correspondence. The spinning D3-branes with a rigid radial Dirichlet cut-off give rise to an effective field theory. This theory describes a charged plasma which is driven by external forces, given by one vector and two scalar operators. Furthermore, the flavour charge of this plasma is anomalous, allowing us to examine features of anomalyinduced transport in the blackfold context. We calculate the hydrodynamic transport coefficients to first order and show that in the near-horizon limit, they reproduce the conformal charged fluid dynamics of N = 4 Super Yang-Mills theory. More generally the system interpolates smoothly between the blackfold, fluid/gravity, and Rindler fluid dynamics.

We holographically compute supercharge diffusion constants in supersymmetric field theories, dual to AdS black brane solutions of arbitrary dimension. This includes the extension of earlier work by Kontoudi and Policastro for D3-branes to M2-and M5brane theories. We consider the case of vanishing chemical potential. In particular, we relate the product of a diffusion constant and the energy density to a universal result for the fermionic absorption cross section. This relation is analogous to the famous proof of universality of η/s. We calculate the diffusion constants in two different ways: First, the computation is performed via the low frequency, low momentum pole of the correlator of supersymmetry currents. This pole describes the hydrodynamic phonino mode, the massless Goldstone fermion of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking by temperature. Second, the calculation is carried out using the dual transversal mode of the bulk gravitino, with the help of a new Kubo formula. Moreover, we provide some evidence for the applicability of generalized dimensional reduction for fermions when computing the corresponding Dp-brane diffusion constants.