Research Interest of Louis Leblond

      Publication 1: THE (P,Q) STRING TENSION IN A WARPED DEFORMED CONIFOLD (URL)
      Publication 2: ON THE PRODUCTION OF OPEN STRINGS FROM BRANE ANTI-BRANE ANNIHILATION (URL)
      Publication 3: STABILITY OF D1 STRINGS INSIDE A D3-BRANE (URL)

    URL of Research: http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~lleblond/statementonly.pdf

Statement of Interest:


  My research has focused on ways to exploit string theory in
cosmology.  My most intensive and fruitful work in this area has been
on the exit from inflation in brane inflationary models. In these
models, the inflaton field is the distance between branes and the
vacuum energy giving rise to inflation is the tension of the branes
themselves.

 In some brane inflationary models, inflation ends when a brane and an
anti-brane collide and annihilate through tachyon condensation.  I
have studied this process using Boundary String Field Theory and
Boundary Conformal Field Theory techniques.  I have also studied
cosmic superstring that are formed at the end of inflation. Currently
I am studying cosmic superstring in flux compactification most
particularly in the Klebanov-Strassler throat where computation can be
done precisely. We have already determined the (p,q) string tension in
such a throat but there is one piece of the puzzle missing. We expect
that the D-string tension should depend on the fluxes but to first
approximation it doesn't. We are now looking at subleading corrections
to the KS throat to determine if the D-string tension is affected by
the fluxes in the throat.