In recent work, two of us proposed a nonsingular Ekpyrotic cosmology making use of an S-brane which forms at the end of the phase of Ekpyrotic contraction. This S-Brane mediates a transition between contraction and expansion. Graviitational waves passing through the S-Brane acquire a roughly scale-invariant spectrum, and if the S-Brane has zero shear, then a roughly scale-invariant spectrum of cosmological perturbatiions results. Here, we study the production of gauge field fluctuations driven by the decay of the S-Brane, and we show that the reheating process via gauge field production will be efficient, leading to a radiation-dominated expanding phase.
We calculate the entanglement entropy of scalar perturbations due to gravitational non-linearities present in any model of canonically-coupled, single-field ekpyrosis. Specifically, we focus on a recent model of improved ekpyrosis which is able to generate a scale-invariant power spectrum of curvature perturbations and gravitational waves as well as have a non-singular bounce due to an S-brane at the end of ekpyrotic contraction. By requiring that the entanglement entropy remians subdominant to the thermal entropy produced during reheating, we get an upper bound on the energy scale of the boun…
We study brane matter in the ekpyrotic scenario and observe that in order to obtain standard gravity on the visible brane, the tension of the visible brane should be positive. If the sizes of both the fifth dimension and the Calabi-Yau threefold are fixed, the Israel junction conditions do not allow time-dependent brane matter. Relaxing this constraint, it is possible to obtain approximately standard cosmology on the visible brane, with small corrections due to possible time-dependence of the Calabi-Yau threefold.
We present a mechanism to transfer the spectrum of perturbations in a scalar isocurvature field $ξ$ onto the matter content in the radiation era via modulated, instant preheating after ekpyrosis. In this setup, $ξ$ determines the coupling constant relevant for the decay of a preheat matter field into Fermions. The resulting power spectrum is scale invariant if $ξ$ remains close to a scaling solution in new ekpyrotic models of the universe; by construction the spectrum is independent of the detailed physics near the bounce. The process differs from the curvaton mechanism, which has been used re…
We study reheating in a recently proposed brane "monodromy inflation" model in which the inflaton is the position of a D4 brane on a "twisted torus". Specifically, we study the repeated collisions between the D4 brane and a D6 brane (on which the Standard Model fields are assumed to be localized) at a fixed position along the monodromy direction as the D4 brane rolls down its potential. We find that there is no trapping of the rolling D4 brane until it reaches the bottom of its potential, and that reheating is entirely described by the last brane encounter. Previous collisions have negligible …
An impressed feature of inflation on warped Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) brane is that the inflationary phase exits spontaneously for a scalar inflaton field with exponential potential, which presents a graceful exit mechanism for the inflation. But its reheating mechanism leaves open. We investigate the curvaton reheating in inflation on warped DGP brane model. The reheating may occur in effctively 5 dimensional or 4 dimensional stage. We study the permitted parameter space of the curvaton field in detail. We demonstrate how the inflation model of the warped DGP brane is improved by the curv…
We have studied extensively phenomenological implications in a specific model of brane inflation driven by background supergravity, via thermal history of the universe and leptogenesis pertaining to the particle physics phenomenology of the early universe. Using the one loop corrected inflationary potential we have investigated for the analytical expression as well as the numerical estimation for brane reheating temperature for standard model particles. This results in some novel features of reheating from this type of inflation which have serious implications in the production of heavy Majora…
In the context of the braneworld inflation driven by a bulk scalar field, we study the energy dissipation from the bulk scalar field into the matter on the brane in order to understand the reheating after inflation. Deriving the late-time behavior of the bulk field with dissipation by using the Green's function method, we give a rigorous justification of the statement that the standard reheating process is reproduced in this bulk inflaton model as long as the Hubble parameter on the brane and the mass of the bulk scalar field are much smaller than the 5-dimensional inverse curvature scale. Our…
We investigate a possibility of reheating in a scenario of D-brane inflation in a warped deformed conifold background which includes perturbative corrections to throat geometry sourced by chiral operator of dimension 3/2 in the CFT. The effective D-brane potential, in this case, belongs to the class of non-oscillatory models of inflation for which the conventional reheating mechanism does not work. We find that gravitational particle production is inefficient and leads to reheating temperature of the order of ${10^8} GeV$. We show that instant preheating is quite suitable to the present scenar…
We propose a mechanism of reheating after inflation in multi-throat scenarios of warped extra dimensions. Validity of an effective field theory on the standard model (SM) brane requires that the position of the SM brane during inflation be different from the position after inflation. The latter is supposed to be near the tip of the SM throat but the former is not. After inflation, when the Hubble expansion rate becomes sufficiently low, the SM brane starts moving towards the tip and eventually oscillates. The SM fields are excited by the brane motion and the universe is reheated. Since interac…
We study cosmological inflation and its dynamics in the framework of the Randall-Sundrum II brane model. In particular, we analyze in detail four representative small-field inflationary potentials, namely Natural inflation, Hilltop inflation, Higgs-like inflation, and Exponential SUSY inflation, each characterized by two mass scales. We constrain the parameters for which a viable inflationary Universe emerges using the latest PLANCK results. Furthermore, we investigate whether or not those models in brane cosmology are consistent with the recently proposed Swampland Criteria, and give predicti…
We study inflation and reheating in a brane world model derived from Type IIA string theory. This particular setup is based on a model of string mediated supersymmetry breaking. The inflaton is one of the transverse scalars of a D4-brane which has one of its spatial dimensions stretched between two NS5-branes, so that it is effectively three-dimensional. This D4-brane is attracted to a D6-brane that is separated from the 5-branes by a fixed amount. The potential of the transverse scalar due to the D4/D6 interaction makes a good inflaton potential. As the D4-brane slides along the two 5-branes …
In this paper we model the transition from the non-geometric holographic cosmology regime, to the usual radiation dominated (RD) cosmology, known as reheating in the case of (perturbative) inflation. We find that we can easily transition into any MSSM construction of intersecting D6-branes, via $α'$ corrections in the 3 dimensional field theory as well as in cosmology, followed by cosmological reheating via S-NS5-branes. Moreover, we can naturally obtain the (true) cosmological constant $Λ$ of the observed order of magnitude. The resulting supersymmetry breaking is just outside the currently o…
We study the cosmological particle creation in the tachyon inflation based on the D-brane dynamics in the RSII model extended to include matter in the bulk. The presence of matter modifies the warp factor which results in two effects: a modification of the RSII cosmology and a modification of the tachyon potential. Besides, a string theory D-brane supports among other fields a U(1) gauge field reflecting open strings attached to the brane. We demonstrate how the interaction of the tachyon with the U(1) gauge field drives cosmological creation of massless particles and estimate the resulting re…
We present a mechanism for exit from inflation and reheating using the AdS/CFT correspondence. A cosmological evolution is induced on a probe D3-brane as it moves in a black D-brane background of type-0 string theory. If the tachyon field is non zero, inflation is induced on the brane-universe, with the equation of state parameter in the range -1<w<-1/3 depending on the position of the probe brane in the bulk. As the probe brane approaches the horizon of the background black hole, the inflation rate decreases and the value of w gets larger. At some critical distance away from the horizon, infl…
We make a generic remark on thermal history of a single brane cosmology in models with an infinitely large single extra dimension. We point out that the reheat temperature of the Universe is bounded by an excess production of gravitons from the thermal bath. The actual bound is given by the brane tension. If the initial temperature of the Universe is larger than this bound, then an efficient graviton production shall prevail. However, the brane cools down gradually as the Kaluza-Klein gravitons take the energy in excess away from the brane. The cooling continues until the radiation dominated p…
We argue that it may be possible to reheat the universe after inflation driven by D-brane annihilation, due to the coupling of massless fields to the time-dependent tachyon condensate which describes the annihilation process. This mechanism can work if the original branes annihilate to a stable brane containing the standard model. Given reasonable assumptions about the shape of the tachyon background configuration and the size of the relevant extra dimension, the reheating can be efficient enough to overcome the problem of the universe being perpetually dominated by cold dark tachyon matter. I…
We study a particle production at the collision of two domain walls in 5-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. This may provide the reheating mechanism of an ekpyrotic (or cyclic) brane universe, in which two BPS branes collide and evolve into a hot big bang universe. We evaluate a production rate of particles confined to the domain wall. The energy density of created particles is given as $ρ\approx 20 \bar{g}^4 N_b ~m_η^4 $ where $\bar{g}$ is a coupling constant of particles to a domain-wall scalar field, $N_b $ is the number of bounces at the collision and $m_η$ is a fundamental mass scale of the…
We study analytically the dynamical formation of lower dimensional branes at the endpoint of brane-antibrane inflation through the condensation of topological defects of the tachyon field which describes the instability of the initial state. We then use this information to quantify the efficiency of the reheating which is due to the coupling of time dependent tachyon background to massless gauge fields which will be localized on the final state branes. We improve upon previous estimates indicating that this can be an efficient reheating mechanism for observers on the brane.
We investigate the early universe evolution in the context of brane inflation driven by a supergravity-inspired $\arctan$ potential. We performed a slow-roll and a semi-analytical reheating analyses and obtained constraints on the inflationary parameters in agreement with Planck 2018 data. We also employed a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis to perform a parameter estimation of the cosmological parameters, obtaining results in good agreement with the currently available cosmic microwave background and baryon acoustic oscillation data. This work establishes the general theoretical predictions o…
We study the spectrum of cosmological fluctuations in the D3/D7 brane inflationary universe with particular attention to the parametric excitation of entropy modes during the reheating stage. The same tachyonic instability which renders reheating in this model very rapid leads to an exponential growth of entropy fluctuations during the preheating stage which in turn may induce a large contribution to the large-scale curvature fluctuations. We take into account the effects of long wavelength quantum fluctuations in the matter fields. As part of this work, we perform an analytical analysis of th…
The emergence of the cosmological composition (the reheating era) after the inflationary period is analyzed in the framework of the braneworld models, in which our Universe is a three-brane embedded in a five-dimensional bulk, by assuming the possibility of the brane-bulk energy exchange. The inflaton field is assumed to decay into normal matter only, while the dark matter is injected into the brane from the bulk. To describe the reheating process we adopt a phenomenological approach, by describing the decay of the inflaton field by a friction term proportional to the energy density of the fie…
In String theory realizations of inflation, the end point of inflation is often brane-anti brane annihilation. We consider the processes of reheating of the Standard Model universe after brane inflation. We identify the channels of inflaton energy decay, cascading from tachyon annihilation through massive closed string loops, KK modes, and brane displacement moduli to the lighter standard model particles. Cosmological data constrains scenarios by putting stringent limits on the fraction of reheating energy deposited in gravitons and nonstandard sector massive relics. We estimate the energy dep…
We investigate in some quantitative details the viability of reheating in multi-throat brane inflationary scenarios by estimating and comparing the time scales for the various processes involved. We also calculate within perturbative string theory the decay rate of excited closed strings into KK modes and compare with that of their decay into gravitons; we find that in the inflationary throat the former is preferred. We also find that over a small but reasonable range of parameters of the background geometry, these KK modes will preferably tunnel to another throat (possibly containing the Stan…
We examine how reheating occurs after brane-antibrane inflation in warped geometries, such as those which have recently been considered for Type IIB string vacua. We adopt the standard picture that the energy released by brane annihilation is dominantly dumped into massive bulk (closed-string) modes which eventually cascade down into massless particles, but argue that the this need not mean that the result is mostly gravitons with negligible visible radiation on the Standard Model brane. We show that if the inflationary throat is not too strongly warped, and if the string coupling is sufficien…
We consider the constraints that can be imposed on a wide class of Inflation models in modified gravity scenarios in which the Friedmann equation is modified by the inclusion of $ρ^2$ terms, where $ρ$ is the total energy density. In particular we obtain the reheating temperature and gravitino abundance associated with the end of inflation. Whereas models of chaotic inflation and natural inflation can easily avoid the conventional gravitino overproduction problem, we show that supersymmetric hybrid inflation models (driven by both F and D-terms) do not work in the $ρ^2$ dominated era. We also s…
In this article, I have studied the cosmological and particle physics constraints on a generic class of large field ($|Δϕ|>M_{p}$) and small field ($|Δϕ<M_{p}$) models of brane inflationary magnetic field from: (1) tensor-to-scalar ratio ($r$), (2) reheating, (3) leptogenesis and (4) baryogenesis in case of Randall-Sundrum single braneworld gravity (RSII) framework. I also establish a direct connection between the magnetic field at the present epoch ($B_{0}$) and primordial gravity waves ($r$), which give a precise estimate of non-vanishing CP asymmetry ($ε_{CP}$) in leptogenesis and baryon as…
We study the production of dark matter and dark radiation after reheating in string inflation models where the Calabi-Yau has a fibred structure and the visible sector lives on D3 branes. We show how the interplay between different physical constraints from inflation, reheating, supersymmetry breaking and dark radiation, leads to distinct predictions for the nature of dark matter.
We consider non-tachyonic hybrid inflation in the context of the braneworld cosmology. When one considers models for brane inflation, hybrid inflation is a natural consequence of the tachyon condensation if it appears at the end of inflation. In this case, however, reheating is a difficult problem due to the peculiar properties of the tachyon. In this paper we show some models for brane inflation where a new type of hybrid inflation is realized due to the localized matter fields. The obvious advantage of our scenario is successful reheating, which is due to the potential that is localized on t…
We review the recent attempts of unifying inflation with quintessence. It appears natural to join the two ends in the framework of brane world cosmology. The models of quintessential inflation belong to the class of {\it non-oscillatory} models for which the mechanism of conventional reheating does not work. Reheating through gravitational particle production is inefficient and leads to the excessive production of relic gravity waves which results in the violation of nucleosynthesis constraint. The mechanism of {\it instant preheating} is quite efficient and is suitable for brane world quintes…
Quintessential inflation describes a scenario in which both inflation and dark energy (quintessence) are described by the same scalar field. In conventional braneworld models of quintessential inflation gravitational particle production is used to reheat the universe. This reheating mechanism is very inefficient and results in an excessive production of gravity waves which violate nucleosynthesis constraints and invalidate the model. We describe a new method of realizing quintessential inflation on the brane in which inflation is followed by `instant preheating' (Felder, Kofman & Linde 1999). …
Reheating or entropy production on the three-brane from a decaying bulk scalar field is studied in the brane-world picture of the Universe. It is shown that a significant amount of dark radiation is produced in this process unless only the specific modes are excited, so that subsequent entropy production within the brane is required in general before primordial nucleosynthesis.
Massive Graviton Dark Matter from a Gapped Continuum
Universidad de Granada（格拉纳达大学）；Universitat de Barcelona（巴塞罗那大学）；Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE)（高能物理研究所）；The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST)（巴塞罗那科学与技术学院）
We study inflation and reheating in models for the brane universe, considering hybrid brane inflation without tachyon condensation. We expect that some fields that are localized on different branes interact with O(1) coupling when branes are on top of each other, while the interaction vanishes when branes are separated at a distance. If the interaction is needed to avoid spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry on the brane, our idea for hybrid brane inflation works. In our model, when branes are far apart, supersymmetry is spontaneously broken by the fields on a brane, which induces inflation. T…
Unstable D-branes or brane-antibrane systems can decay to lower-dimensional branes. In the effective field theory description, the final state branes are defects in the tachyon field which describes the initial instability. We study the dynamical formation of codimension one defects (kinks) using Sen's ansatz for the tachyon Lagrangian. It is shown that the slope of the kink diverges within a finite amount of time after the tachyon starts to roll. We discuss the relevance for reheating after brane-antibrane inflation.
We study perturbative reheating at the end of fibre inflation where the inflaton is a closed string modulus with a Starobinsky-like potential. We first derive the spectral index $n_s$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ as a function of the number of efoldings and the parameter $R$ which controls slow-roll breaking corrections. We then compute the inflaton couplings and decay rates into ultra-light bulk axions and visible sector fields on D7-branes wrapping the inflaton divisor. This leads to a reheating temperature of order $10^{10}$ GeV which requires $52$ efoldings. Ultra-light axions contri…
We propose a new way of obtaining slow-roll inflation in the context of higher dimensional models motivated by string and M theory. In our model, all extra spatial dimensions are orbifolded. The initial conditions are taken to be a hot dense bulk brane gas which drives an initial phase of isotropic bulk expansion. This phase ends when a weak potential between the orbifold fixed planes begins to dominate. For a wide class of potentials, a period during which the bulk dimensions decrease sufficiently slowly to lead to slow-roll inflation of the three dimensions parallel to the orbifold fixed pla…
We argue that a brane world with a warped, infinite extra dimension allows for the inflaton to decay into the bulk so that after inflation, the effective dark energy disappears from our brane. This is achieved by the redshifting of the decay products into infinity of the 5th dimension. As a consequence, all matter and CMB density perturbations could have their origin in the decay of a MSSM flat direction rather than the inflaton. We also discuss a string theoretical model where reheating after inflation may not affect the observable brane.
We investigate the leading contribution to open string production in the time dependent background of the Brane Anti-Brane. This is a 1-loop diagram and we use Boundary Conformal Field Theory (BCFT) techniques to study it. We show that the amplitude to a single open string naively diverges when one looks at it as an expansion in oscillator levels. Nevertheless, we show that once we sum over all oscillator levels we get a finite result. We also clarify where to perform the inverse Wick rotation in this kind of problems. This calculation could have important consequences for the theory of reheat…
We study (p)reheating in modular (closed string) inflationary scenarios, with a special emphasis on Kahler moduli/Roulette models. It is usually assumed that reheating in such models occurs through perturbative decays. However, we find that there are very strong non-perturbative preheating decay channels related to the particular shape of the inflaton potential (which is highly nonlinear and has a very steep minimum). Preheating after modular inflation, proceeding through a combination of tachyonic instability and broad-band parametric resonance, is perhaps the most violent example of preheati…
We study anisotropic reheating (entropy production) on 3D brane from a decaying bulk scalar field in the brane-world picture of the Universe by considering off-diagonal metrics and anholonomic frames. We show that a significant amount of, in general, anisotropic dark radiation is produced in this process unless only the modes which satisfy a specific relation are excited. We conclude that subsequent entropy production within the brane is required in general before primordial nucleosynthesis and that the presence of off-diagonal components (like in the Salam, Strathee and Petracci works) of the…
We study the spectrum of the gravitational modes in Minkowski spacetime due to a 6-dimensional warped deformed conifold, i.e., a warped throat, in superstring theory. After identifying the zero mode as the usual 4D graviton, we present the KK spectrum as well as other excitation modes. Gluing the throat to the bulk (a realistic scenario), we see that the graviton has a rather uniform probability distribution everywhere while a KK mode is peaked in the throat, as expected. Due to the suppressed measure of the throat in the wave function normalization, we find that a KK mode's probability in the…
