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Supergravity models of natural inflation and its generalizations are presented. These models are special examples of the class of supergravity models proposed in [R. Kallosh and A. Linde, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 11 (2010) Oil; R. Kallosh, A. Linde, and T. Rube, Phys. Rev. D 83, 043507 (2011)], which have a shift symmetric Kahler potential, superpotential linear in goldstino, and stable Minkowski vacua. We present a class of supergravity models with arbitrary potentials modulated by sinusoidal oscillations, similar to the potentials associated with axion monodromy models. We show that one can implement natural inflation in supergravity even in the models of a single axion field with axion parameters O(1). We also discuss the irrational axion landscape in supergravity, which describes a potential with an infinite number of stable Minkowski and metastable dS minima. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We establish a relation between certain classes of flux compactifications and certain families of black hole microstate solutions. This connection reveals a rather unexpected result: there exist supersymmetnc solutions of Ν = 8 supergravity that live inside many Ν = 2 truncations, but are not supersymmetnc inside any of them. If this phenomenon is generic, it indicates the possible existence of much larger families of supersymmetric black rings and black hole microstates than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The event horizon of a black hole in general relativity absorbs all infalling radiation. Any observation of the contrary would immediately challenge the expectation that astrophysical black holes are described by the vacuum Kerr geometry. If a putative black hole does reflect part of the ingoing radiation, its quasinormal mode structure is drastically altered. Low frequency modes can be introduced that are resonantly excited during the inspiral of a binary system. We study the resulting phase shift of the gravitational wave signal. Building on neutron star results, we obtain a model-independent expression for the phase shift that depends only on quasinormal modes and Love numbers of the compact object. We find that the phase shift might be detectable with Einstein Telescope for asymmetric binaries in high signal-to-noise events (∼10³), but by far cannot explore the Planck scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a systematic ray-tracing method which can be used to explore a wide class of higher-dimensional multicenter black objects through the shape of their shadows. As a proof of principle, we test our method by imaging black holes and black rings in five dimensions. Two-dimensional slices of the three-dimensional shadows of those five-dimensional black objects not only show new phenomena, such as the first image of a toroidal horizon but also offer a new viewpoint on black holes and binary systems in four dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the supersymmetry breaking induced by probe anti-D3-branes at the tip of the Klebanov-Strassler throat geometry. Antibranes inside this geometry polarize and can be described by an NS5-brane wrapping an S². When the number of antibranes is small compared to the background flux a metastable state exists that breaks supersymmetry. We present a manifestly supersymmetric effective model that realizes the polarized metastable state as a solution, spontaneously breaking the supersymmetry. The supersymmetric model relies crucially on the inclusion of Kaluza-Klein (matrix) degrees of freedom on the S² and two supersymmetric irrelevant deformations of N=4 super-Yang-Mills (SYM), describing a large number of supersymmetric D3-branes in the IR. We explicitly identify the massless Goldstino and compute the spectrum of massive fluctuations around the metastable supersymmetry-breaking minimum, finding a Kaluza-Klein tower with masses warped down from the string scale. Below the Kaluza-Klein scale the massive tower can be integrated out and supersymmetry is realized nonlinearly. We comment on the effect of the Kaluza-Klein modes on the effective description of de Sitter vacua in string theory and inflationary model building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structure at the horizon scale of black holes would give rise to echoes of the gravitational wave signal associated with the postmerger ringdown phase in binary coalescences. We study the waveform of echoes in static and stationary, traversable wormholes in which perturbations are governed by a symmetric effective potential. We argue that echoes are dominated by the wormhole quasinormal frequency nearest to the fundamental black hole frequency that controls the primary signal. We put forward an accurate method to construct the echoes' waveform(s) from the primary signal and the quasinormal frequencies of the wormhole, which we characterize. We illustrate this in the static Damour-Solodukhin wormhole and in a new, rotating generalization that approximates a Kerr black hole outside the throat. Rotation gives rise to a potential with an intermediate plateau region that breaks the degeneracy of the quasinormal frequencies. Rotation also leads to late-time instabilities that, however, fade away for small angular momentum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]