English

Vacuum Sampling in the Landscape during Inflation

High Energy Physics - Theory 2008-11-26 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We consider the phenomenological consequences of sampling multiple vacua during inflation motivated by an enormous landscape. A generic consequence of this sampling is the formation of domain walls, characterized by the scale μ\mu of the barriers that partition the accessed vacua. We find that the success of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) implies μ\gsim10\mu \gsim 10 TeV, as long as the sampled vacua have a non-degeneracy larger than O(MeV4)\cal{O}({{\rm MeV}}^{\rm 4}). Otherwise, the walls will dominate and eventually form black holes that must reheat the universe sufficiently for BBN to take place; in this case, we obtain μ\gsim105MP\mu \gsim 10^{-5}M_P. These black holes are not allowed to survive and contribute to cosmic dark matter density.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0611232,
  title  = {Vacuum Sampling in the Landscape during Inflation},
  author = {Hooman Davoudiasl and Sash Sarangi and Gary Shiu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0611232},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

4 pages. Abstract changed. New results and conclusion added

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:39:27.229Z