Moduli evolution in the presence of thermal corrections

TL;DR

This paper investigates how thermal corrections influence moduli stabilization in supergravity models, showing that while they can reduce the initial conditions for stabilization, they do not necessarily eliminate potential minima, and can relax reheating temperature bounds.

Contribution

The study demonstrates that thermal corrections do not always remove minima in moduli potentials and can expand the viable reheating temperature range in flux compactification models.

Findings

Thermal corrections can significantly reduce the initial conditions for moduli stabilization.

The presence of minima in the potential is not necessarily erased by thermal effects.

Reheating temperature bounds can be relaxed due to slow moduli evolution.

Abstract

We study the effect of thermal corrections on the evolution of moduli in effective Supergravity models. This is motivated by previous results in the literature suggesting that these corrections could alter and, even, erase the presence of a minimum in the zero temperature potential, something that would have disastrous consequences in these particular models. We show that, in a representative sample of flux compactification constructions, this need not be the case, although we find that the inclusion of thermal corrections can dramatically decrease the region of initial conditions for which the moduli are stabilised. Moreover, the bounds on the reheating temperature coming from demanding that the full, finite temperature potential, has a minimum can be considerably relaxed given the slow pace at which the evolution proceeds.