The recent birth of gravitational wave astronomy invites a new generation of precision tests of general relativity. Signatures of black hole (BH) mergers must be systematically explored in a wide spectrum of modified gravity theories. Here, we turn to one such theory in which the initial value problem for BH mergers is well posed, the Einstein-Maxwelldilaton system. We present conservative estimates for the merger parameters (final spins, quasinormal modes) based on techniques that have worked well for ordinary gravity mergers and utilize information extracted from test particle motion in the final BH metric. The computation is developed in parallel for the modified gravity BHs (we specifically focus on the Kaluza-Klein value of the dilaton coupling, for which analytic BH solutions are known) and ordinary Kerr-Newman BHs. We comment on the possibility of obtaining final BHs with spins consistent with current observations.

We propose a supersymmetrisation of the cosmological constant in ordinary N = 1 supergravity that breaks supersymmetry spontaneously by a constant Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) term associated to a U (1) symmetry. This term is a variation of a new gauge invariant FI term proposed recently, which is invariant under Kähler transformations and can be written even for a gauged R-symmetry on top of the standard FI contribution. The two terms are the same in the absence of matter but differ in its presence. The proposed term is reduced to a constant FI-term up to fermion interactions that disappear in the unitary gauge in the absence of any F-term supersymmetry breaking. The constant FI term leads to a positive cosmological constant, uplifting the vacuum energy from the usual anti-de Sitter supergravity to any higher value.Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecomm ons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Funded by SCOAP 3 .

We study the cosmology of a recent model of supersymmetry breaking, in the presence of a tuneable positive cosmological constant, based on a gauged shift symmetry of a string modulus that can be identified with the string dilaton. The minimal spectrum of the 'hidden' supersymmetry breaking sector consists then of a vector multiplet that gauges the shift symmetry of the dilaton multiplet and when coupled to the MSSM leads to a distinct low energy phenomenology depending on one parameter. Here we study the question if this model can also lead to inflation by identifying the dilaton with the inflaton. We find that this is possible if the Kähler potential is modified by a term that has the form of NS5-brane instantons, leading to an appropriate inflationary plateau around the maximum of the scalar potential, depending on two extra parameters. This model is consistent with present cosmological observations without modifying the low energy particle phenomenology associated to the minimum of the scalar potential.

We analyse the consequences of a new gauge invariant Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) term proposed recently to a class of inflation models driven by supersymmetry breaking with the inflaton being the superpartner of the goldstino. We first show that charged matter fields can be consistently added with the new term, as well as the standard FI term in supergravity in a Kähler frame where the U (1) is not an Rsymmetry. We then show that the slow-roll conditions can be easily satisfied with inflation driven by a D-term depending on the two FI parameters. Inflation starts at initial conditions around the maximum of the potential where the U (1) symmetry is restored and stops when the inflaton rolls down to the minimum describing the present phase of our Universe. The resulting tensor-to-scalar ratio of primordial perturbations can be even at observable values in the presence of higher order terms in the Kähler potential.

In the deconfined phase of quark-gluon plasma, it seems that most of the quarks, antiquarks and gluons should be effectively free in the absence of the linear confining potential. However, the remaining Coulomb-type potential between quarks in the plasma could still be sufficiently strong that certain bound states, notably of heavy quarks such as J/ψ are stable even in the deconfined plasma up to a certain temperature. Baryons can also exist in the deconfined phase provided that the density is sufficiently large. We study three kinds of exotic multi-quark bound states in the deconfined phase of quarkgluon plasma from gravity dual models in addition to the normal baryon. They are k-baryon, (N +k)-baryon and a bound state of j mesons which we call "j-mesonance". Binding energies and screening lengths of these exotic states are studied and are found to have similar properties to those of mesons and baryons at the leading order. Phase diagram for the exotic nuclear phases is subsequently studied in the Sakai-Sugimoto model. Even though the exotics are less stable than normal baryons, in the region of high chemical potential and low temperature, they are more stable thermodynamically than the vacuum and chiral-symmetric quark-gluon plasma phases (χS-QGP). *