Reheating Metastable O'Raifeartaigh Models

TL;DR

This paper investigates how high-temperature reheating affects metastable vacua in theories with multiple vacua, showing that certain supersymmetric models prevent transitions to lower energy states regardless of reheating temperature.

Contribution

It demonstrates that in a class of supersymmetric models, transitions from metastable to lower energy vacua are suppressed even at arbitrarily high reheating temperatures.

Findings

Reheating above barrier height can induce vacuum transitions in general theories.

Certain supersymmetric models inherently prevent such transitions regardless of reheating temperature.

The results impose constraints on cosmological models involving metastable vacua.

Abstract

In theories with multiple vacua, reheating to a temperature greater than the height of a barrier can stimulate transitions from a desirable metastable vacuum to a lower energy state. We discuss the constraints this places on various theories and demonstrate that in a class of supersymmetric models this transition does not occur even for arbitrarily high reheating temperature.