Cosmic Acceleration and M Theory Cosmology

Ishwaree P. Neupane

Published 2004-02-03, updated 2004-02-23Version 4

This is a short overview of spatially flat (or open) four-dimensional accelerating cosmologies for some simple exponential potentials obtained by string or M theory compactification on some non-trivial curved spaces, which may lead to some striking results, e.g., the observed cosmic acceleration and the scale of the dark energy from first principles.