Related papers: Moduli-Induced Gravitino Problem
We investigate the production of gravitinos in a cosmological background. Gravitinos can be produced during preheating after inflation due to a combined effect of interactions with an oscillating inflaton field and absence of conformal…
In Chapter 1 I present the current picture of the universe and briefly review the cosmological constant problem and some of the theories proposed to solve it. The following Chapters essentially contain the published papers with some…
If the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) is Higgsino-like, the thermal relic density is lower than the observed dark matter content for a LSP mass in the sub-TeV region. We outline constraints arising from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope…
In the recent years, phenomenological models of moduli stabilization were proposed, where the dynamics of the stabilization is essentially supersymmetric, whereas an O'Rafearthaigh supersymmetry breaking sector is responsible for the…
A scenario which overcomes the well-known cosmological overshoot problem associated with stabilizing moduli with steep potentials in string theory is proposed. Our proposal relies on the fact that moduli potentials are very steep and that…
Some models of modified gravity and their observational manifestations are considered. It is shown, that gravitating systems with mass density rising with time evolve to a singular state with infinite curvature scalar. The universe…
Measurements of the evolution with redshift of the number density of massive galaxy clusters are used to constrain the energy density of massive neutrinos and so the sum of neutrino masses $\sum m_\nu$. We consider a spatially-flat…
We study the production of spin 1/2 gravitinos in a thermal Universe. Taking into account supersymmetry breaking due to the finite thermal energy density of the Universe, there is a large enhancement in the cross section of production of…
Based on the R-parity violation option of the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model, we examine the scenario where the massive gravitino, relic from the hot big-bang, is the lightest supersymmetric particle and can decay through one or…
We consider the modification of Newton's gravity law in Dolgov's higher spin models designed to compensate the cosmological constant. We find that the effective Planck mass is unacceptably large in these models. We also point out that the…
Moduli fields are generally present in superstring--inspired models. They are typically characterized by masses of the order of the supersymmetry breaking scale and by interactions of gravitational strength to ordinary matter. If stable,…
The most natural way to break the GUT gauge symmetry is with a Higgs field whose vacuum expectation value is of order $10^{16}\,\mbox{GeV}$ but whose mass is of order $10^2$ to $10^3\,\mbox{GeV}$. This can lead to a cosmological history…
We study non-thermal gravitino production in the minimal supergravity inflation. In this minimal model utilizing orthogonal nilpotent superfields, the particle spectrum includes only graviton, gravitino, inflaton, and goldstino. We find…
We study the consequences of the gravitino decay into dark matter. We suppose that the lightest neutralino is the main component of dark matter. In our framework gravitino is heavy enough to decay before Big Bang Nucleosynthesis starts. We…
I briefly discuss the challenges presented by attempting to modify general relativity to obtain an explanation for the observed accelerated expansion of the universe. Foremost among these are the questions of theoretical consistency - the…
In supersymmetric theories, the gravitino is abundantly produced in the early Universe from thermal scattering, resulting in a strong upper bound on the reheat temperature after inflation. We point out that the gravitino problem may be…
We consider cosmological scenarios in which density perturbations are generated by the quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field at early times; the late time dynamics involves a modulus which first dominates the energy density of the…
We study properties of the Polonyi field in the renormalizable hidden sector in supergravity models. It is shown that radiative corrections induce a sizable coupling of the Polonyi field to gravitinos as well as raise its mass to an…
Gravitino production and decay in the inflationary universe are reexamined. Assuming that the gravitino mainly decays into a photon and a photino, we calculate the upperbound on the reheating temperature. Compared to previous works, we have…
The Large Volume Scenario for getting a non-supersymmetric vacuum in type IIB string theory leads, through the Weyl anomaly and renormalization group running, to an interesting phenomenology. However, for gravitino masses below 500 TeV…