Related papers: Cosmology in the presence of multiple light moduli
In string/M-theory with a large compactification radius, some axion-like moduli can be much lighter than the gravitino. Generic moduli in gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking models also have a mass far below the weak scale. Motivated by…
Cosmological moduli generically come to dominate the energy density of the early universe, and thereby trigger an early matter dominated era. Such non-standard cosmological histories are expected to have profound effects on the evolution…
The appearance of scalar/moduli fields in the early universe, as motivated by string theory, naturally leads to non-thermal "moduli cosmology". Such cosmology provides a consistent framework where the generation of radiation, baryons, and…
Light scalar fields called moduli arise from a variety of different models involving supersymmetry and/or string theory; thus their existence is a generic prediction of leading theories for physics beyond the standard model. They also…
We argue that dark radiation is naturally generated from the decay of the overall volume modulus in the LARGE volume scenario. We consider both sequestered and non-sequestered cases, and find that the axionic superpartner of the modulus is…
The supersymmetrized DFSZ axion model is especially compelling in that it contains 1. the SUSY solution to the gauge hierarchy problem, 2. the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) solution to the strong CP problem and 3. the Kim-Nilles solution to the SUSY mu…
Dark matter may be coupled to dark radiation: light degrees of freedom that mediate forces between dark sector particles. Cosmological constraints favor dark radiation that is colder than Standard Model radiation. In models with fixed…
The string/$M$ theory Axiverse -- a plethora of very light Axion Like Particles (ALPs) with a vast range of masses -- is arguably a generic prediction of string/$M$ theory. String/$M$ theory also tends to predict that the early Universe is…
We motivate Higgsino dark matter from a solution to the cosmological moduli/gravitino problem. Cosmological moduli/gravitino should be heavy enough to decay before the onset of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and this requirement typically forces…
Moduli fields generically produce strong dark matter -- radiation and baryon -- radiation isocurvature perturbations through their decay if they remain light during inflation. We show that existing upper bounds on the magnitude of such…
We show that gravitinos produced by decays of a supersymmetry breaking scalar field (the pseudo-moduli field) can naturally explain the observed abundance of dark matter in a certain class of the gauge mediation models. We study the decay…
The cosmological moduli problem (CMP) comes in three parts: 1. potential violation of BBN constraints from late decaying moduli fields, 2. the moduli-induced gravitino problem wherein gravitinos are overproduced and 3. the moduli-induced…
We consider Dark Matter composed of an oscillating singlet scalar field. On top of the mass term, the scalar is equipped with a potential spontaneously breaking Z_2-symmetry. This potential dominates at early times and leads to the…
One proposed solution of the moduli problem of string cosmology requires that the moduli are quite heavy, their decays reheating the universe to temperatures above the scale of nucleosynthesis. In many of these scenarios, the moduli are…
We study the spectrum, couplings and cosmological and astrophysical implications of the moduli fields for the class of Calabi-Yau IIB string compactifications for which moduli stabilisation leads to an exponentially large volume V ~ 10^{15}…
Motivated by their potential role as dark matter, we study the cosmological evolution of light scalar and vector fields non-minimally coupled to gravity. Our focus is on a situation where the dominant contribution to the energy density…
We point out that the cosmological moduli problem is not necessarily resolved even if the modulus mass is heavier than O(10)TeV, contrary to the common wisdom. The point is that, in many scenarios where the lightest moduli fields are…
In some models of supersymmetry breaking, modulus fields are heavy enough to decay before BBN. But the large entropy produced via moduli decay significantly dilutes the preexisting baryon asymmetry of the universe. We study whether…
Light moduli fields, gravitationally coupled scalar fields with no classical potential and which are expected to emerge as remnants from string theory compactification, are dangerous to cosmology in that 1. their late-time decays may…
We critically review the role of cosmological moduli in determining the post-inflationary history of the universe. Moduli are ubiquitous in string and M-theory constructions of beyond the Standard Model physics, where they parametrize the…