Was the Universe Actually Radiation Dominated Prior to Nucleosynthesis?

Abstract

Maybe not. String theory approaches to both beyond the Standard Model and Inflationary model building generically predict the existence of scalars (moduli) that are light compared to the scale of quantum gravity. These moduli become displaced from their low energy minima in the early universe and lead to a prolonged matter-dominated epoch prior to BBN. In this paper, we examine whether non-perturbative effects such as parametric resonance or tachyonic instabilities can shorten, or even eliminate, the moduli condensate and matter-dominated epoch. Such effects depend crucially on the strength of the couplings, and we find that unless the moduli become strongly coupled the matter-dominated epoch is unavoidable. In particular, we find that in string and M-theory compactifications where the lightest moduli are near the TeV-scale that a matter-dominated epoch will persist until the time of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.

6 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Reheating in Inflationary Cosmology: Theory and Applications
• Nonperturbative Dynamics Of Reheating After Inflation: A Review
• Magnetic fields from inflation?
• The $G_2$-MSSM - An $M$ Theory motivated model of Particle Physics
• Non-thermal Histories and Implications for Structure Formation
• Dilaton Dynamics from Production of Tensionless Membranes
• Cosmological Moduli Dynamics
• Non-Perturbative Instabilities as a Solution of the Cosmological Moduli Problem
• Kinetic Mixing at Strong Coupling
• A note on the moduli-induced gravitino problem

Cited by in corpus (10)

• The art of simulating the early Universe -- Part I
• Gravitational wave probes of axion-like particles
• BSM with Cosmic Strings: Heavy, up to EeV mass, Unstable Particles
• Breaking a dark degeneracy: The gamma-ray signature of early matter domination
• Energy Spectrum of Thermalizing High Energy Decay Products in the Early Universe
• Spillway Preheating
• Dark photon dark matter from an oscillating dilaton
• Flipped SU(5) GUT Phenomenology: Proton Decay and $g_{\mu }-2$
• Dark Matter Microhalos in the Solar Neighborhood: Pulsar Timing Signatures of Early Matter Domination
• Experimental targets for dark photon dark matter