TY - JOUR
T1 - A cosmological mechanism for stabilizing moduli
AU - Huey, Greg
AU - Steinhardt, Paul J.
AU - Ovrut, Burt A.
AU - Waldram, Daniel
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank M. Dine for useful discussions.. The work was supported by the US Department of Energy grant DE-FG02-91ER40671 (GH, PJS, DW) and DE-AC02-76-ER-03071 (BO).
PY - 2000/3/16
Y1 - 2000/3/16
N2 - In this Letter, we show how the generic coupling of moduli to the kinetic energy of ordinary matter fields results in a cosmological mechanism that influences the evolution and stability of moduli. As an example, we reconsider the problem of stabilizing the dilaton in a non-perturbative potential induced by gaugino condensates. A well-known difficulty is that the potential is so steep that the dilaton field tends to overrun the correct minimum and to evolve to an observationally unacceptable vacuum. We show that the dilaton coupling to the kinetic or thermal energy of matter fields produces a natural mechanism for gently relaxing the dilaton field into the correct minimum of the potential without fine-tuning of initial conditions. The same mechanism is potentially relevant for stabilizing other moduli fields. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
AB - In this Letter, we show how the generic coupling of moduli to the kinetic energy of ordinary matter fields results in a cosmological mechanism that influences the evolution and stability of moduli. As an example, we reconsider the problem of stabilizing the dilaton in a non-perturbative potential induced by gaugino condensates. A well-known difficulty is that the potential is so steep that the dilaton field tends to overrun the correct minimum and to evolve to an observationally unacceptable vacuum. We show that the dilaton coupling to the kinetic or thermal energy of matter fields produces a natural mechanism for gently relaxing the dilaton field into the correct minimum of the potential without fine-tuning of initial conditions. The same mechanism is potentially relevant for stabilizing other moduli fields. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
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U2 - 10.1016/S0370-2693(00)00152-0
DO - 10.1016/S0370-2693(00)00152-0
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0034673504
SN - 0370-2693
VL - 476
SP - 379
EP - 386
JO - Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
JF - Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
IS - 3-4
ER -