University of California, Davis

Physics Department

Cosmology Seminar
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Alexander Maloney

Stanford

"Beauty is Attractive: Moduli Trapping at Enhanced Symmetry Points"

String and field theories often have moduli spaces with special points of enhanced symmetry, where new degrees of freedom become light. Quantum effects tend to trap the moduli at these points of enhanced symmetry. This is a qualitatively new phenomenon with several important cosmological applications -- it ameliorates the cosmological moduli problem and may provide a dynamical solution to the vacuum selection problem. In particular, given suitable assumptions about the very early universe, this effect might explain why among the plethora of possible vacuum states of string theory, we appear to live in one with a large number of light particles and (spontaneously broken) symmetries. Moduli trapping also leads to novel effects in various time dependent scenarios of string theory, such as systems of moving D-branes.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
12:40 pm., 416 Phy/Geo