High Temperature Symmetry Breaking, SUSY Flat Directions, and the Monopole Problem

TL;DR

The paper demonstrates that supersymmetric flat directions can develop large vacuum expectation values at high temperatures, preventing magnetic monopole formation and offering a solution to the monopole problem regardless of inflation timing.

Contribution

It introduces a mechanism where high-temperature effects induce large VEVs along flat directions, maintaining broken gauge charges and avoiding monopole production.

Findings

Large VEVs can form via temperature-induced dimensional transmutation.

Broken gauge charges persist at arbitrarily high temperatures.

Magnetic monopoles are never produced under this scenario.

Abstract

Supersymmetric flat directions allow a generic counterexample to the phenomenon of symmetry restoration at high temperatures. We show that (exponentially) large VEVs can be developed along these directions through temperature-induced `dimensional transmutation'. A minimum with broken gauge charges (e.g. electric charge) can exist at arbitrarily high temperatures. In such a scenario magnetic monopoles are never formed, independent of whether inflation occurs before or after the GUT phase transition, or whether it occurs at all.