A cosmological mechanism for stabilizing moduli

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.