Document Type
Poster
Publication Date
Summer 2025
Abstract
In the early moments of the universe, during an epoch known as cosmic inflation, the energy density of the Universe was dominated by the inflaton field. This field is much more massive than the particles we encounter today, so there may have been fields, such as cosmological moduli fields, that were dominant in the Universe’s energy density between inflation and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). After inflation, the Universe is cold because all of the energy is in the homogenous mode of the inflaton field. If the modulus field remains dominant at the time of BBN, it will be an obstacle to the creation of particles. This is the cosmic moduli problem, and we resolve it by examining processes of modulus decay. We investigated this by evolving field equations over time in a numerical simulation, and observing whether energy left the modulus field and went into non-zero modes of another field, the axion field. Modulus
Recommended Citation
Brown, Owen and Giblin, Tom, "Modulus Decay with an Axion Field" (2025). Kenyon Summer Science Scholars Program. Paper 760.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/summerscienceprogram/760
Rights Statement
