A mechanism for freezing moduli into Minkowski spacetime

TL;DR

This paper presents a mechanism where negatively-curved FLRW cosmologies induce late-time freezing of moduli into Minkowski spacetime via Hubble friction, applicable to string compactifications with pure moduli.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cosmological mechanism for moduli stabilization that operates independently of moduli-space curvature, leading to Minkowski spacetime at late times.

Findings

Moduli freeze at late times due to Hubble friction in negatively-curved FLRW universes.

The solutions asymptotically approach a Milne universe, corresponding to Minkowski spacetime.

The mechanism applies broadly to pure moduli in string compactifications.

Abstract

We discuss FLRW-cosmologies with negatively-curved spatial slices that induce a late-time freezing of all the moduli of an effective field theory through Hubble friction, independently of the moduli-space curvature. This holds for pure moduli, which appear ubiquitously in string compactifications. Crucially, the cosmological solutions approach a Milne universe. Hence, the mechanism we describe in fact corresponds to late-time moduli freezing into Minkowski spacetime.