Creating the Universe from Brane-Antibrane Annihilation

TL;DR

This paper explores how brane-antibrane annihilation in the early universe can produce stable lower-dimensional branes, potentially explaining the origin of our universe and providing a reheating mechanism after inflation.

Contribution

It reexamines the formation of (p-2)-branes as cosmic string defects and estimates their role in reheating through gauge boson production, improving previous models.

Findings

Formation of (p-2)-branes as cosmic strings is quantifiable.

Massless gauge bosons can be efficiently produced during brane annihilation.

Reheating via gauge boson production is a viable mechanism post-inflation.

Abstract

When p-dimensional branes annihilate with antibranes in the early universe, as in brane-antibrane inflation, stable (p-2)-dimensional branes can appear in the final state. We reexamine the possibility that one of these (p-2)-branes could be our universe. In the low energy effective theory, the final state branes are cosmic string defects of the complex tachyon field which describes the instability of the initial state. We quantify the dynamics of formation of these vortices. This information is then used to estimate the production of massless gauge bosons on the final branes, due to their coupling to the time-dependent tachyon background, which would provide a mechanism for reheating after inflation. We improve upon previous estimates indicating that this can be an efficient reheating mechanism for observers on the brane.