arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M. Kawasaki.
We study the initial value problem of new inflation models in the scheme of supergravity. We find that an inflaton generally acquires a mass of the order of the Hubble parameter via gravitationally suppressed interactions with particles in the thermal bath of the universe. This additional mass term stabilizes dynamically the inflaton at the local maximum of the potential, which offers the initial condition of new inflation.
The thermal inflation is the most plausible mechanism that solves the cosmological moduli problem naturally. We discuss relic abundance of superheavy particle $X$ in the presence of the thermal inflation assuming that its lifetime is longer than the age of the universe, and show that the long-lived particle $X$ of mass $10^{12}$--$10^{14}$ GeV may form a part of the dark matter in the present universe in a wide region of parameter space of the thermal inflation model. The superheavy dark matter of mass $\sim 10^{13}$ GeV may be interesting in particular, since its decay may account for the observed ultra high-energy cosmic rays if the lifetime of the $X$ particle is sufficiently long.
We investigate the leptogenesis via decays of heavy Majorana neutrinos which are produced non-thermally in inflaton decays. We make a comprehensive study on the leptogenesis assuming various supersymmetric (SUSY) models for hybrid, new and topological inflations. For an estimation of the lepton asymmetry we adopt the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism for mass matrices of quarks and leptons. We find that all of these models are successful to produce the lepton asymmetry enough to explain the baryon number in the present universe. Here we impose low reheating temperatures such as $T_R \lesssim 10^8$ GeV in order to suppress the abundance of gravitinos not to conflict with the big-bang nucleosynthesis. Furthermore, we find that the leptogenesis works very well even with $T_R \simeq 10^{6}$ GeV in the SUSY hybrid or new inflation model. It is known that such a reheating temperature is low enough to suppress the abundance of gravitinos of mass $m_{3/2} \simeq 100$ GeV--1 TeV. Thus, the leptogenesis is fully consistent with the big-bang nucleosynthesis in a wide region of the gravitino mass.
The axion is the most attractive candidate to solve the strong CP problem in QCD. If it exists, the inflationary universe produces axion fluctuations which are mixtures of isocurvature and adiabatic fluctuations in general. We investigate how large isocurvature fluctuations are allowed or favored in order to explain observations of the large scale structure of the present universe. Generic flat universe models with mixed (isocurvature + adiabatic) density fluctuations are studied. It is found that the observations are consistent with the mixed fluctuation model if the ratio αof the power spectrum of isocurvature fluctuations to that of adiabatic fluctuations is less than \sim 0.1. In particular, the mixed fluctuation model with α\sim 0.05, total matter density Ω_{0} =0.4, and Hubble parameter H_0=70 km/s/Mpc gives a very good fit to the observational data. Since the height of the acoustic peak in the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation decreases significantly when the isocurvature fluctuations are present, the mixed fluctuation model can be tested in future satellite experiments. Ratios of the amplitude at the peak location to that at the COBE normalization scale for various models are given. Furthermore, we also obtain the amplitude of isocurvature fluctuations as a function of axion parameters and the Hubble parameter during the inflation. We discuss the axion fluctuations in some realistic inflation models and find that a significant amount of the isocurvature fluctuations are naturally produced.
We study a leptogenesis via decays of heavy Majorana neutrinos produced non-thermally in inflaton decays. We find that this scenario is fully consistent with existing supersymmetric inflation models such as for topological or for hybrid inflation and the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism generating hierarchies in quark and lepton mass matrices. The reheating temperature $T_R$ of inflation may be taken as low as $T_R \simeq 10^8$ GeV to avoid the cosmological gravitino problem.
Cosmological evolution of axionic strings is investigated by numerically solving field equations of a complex scalar field in 3+1 dimensions. It is shown that the global strings relax to the scaling solution with a significantly smaller number density than the case of local strings. The power spectrum of axions radiated from them is calculated from the simulation data, which is found to be highly peaked around the Hubble scale, and a more accurate constraint on the Peccei-Quinn breaking scale is obtained.
We investigate cosmological effects concerning the late-time entropy production due to the decay of non-relativistic massive particles. The thermalization process of neutrinos after the entropy production is properly solved by using the Boltzmann equation. If a large entropy production takes place at late time t$\simeq$ 1 sec, it is found that a large fraction of neutrinos cannot be thermalized. This fact loosens the tight constraint on the reheating temperature T_R from the big bang nucleosynthesis and T_R could be as low as 0.5 MeV. The influence on the large scale structure formation and cosmic microwave background anisotropies is also discussed.
In superstring theories, there exist various dilaton and modulus fields which masses are expected to be of the order of the gravitino mass $m_{3/2}$. These fields lead to serious cosmological difficulties, so called ``cosmological moduli problem'', because a large number of moduli particles are produced as the coherent oscillations after the primordial inflation. We make a comprehensive study whether the thermal inflation can solve the cosmological moduli problem in the whole modulus mass region $m_ϕ\sim 10 eV - 10^4 GeV$ predicted by both hidden sector supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking and gauge-mediated SUSY breaking models. In particular, we take into account the primordial inflation model whose reheating temperature is so low that its reheating process finishes after the thermal inflation ends. We find that the above mass region $m_ϕ(\simeq m_{3/2}) \sim 10 eV - 10^4 GeV$ survives from various cosmological constraints in the presence of the thermal inflation.
We investigate cosmological moduli problem in the gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking (GMSB). A mini-inflation (oscillating inflation) takes place when a scalar field corresponding to the flat direction in GMSB oscillates along the logarithmic potential induced by the gauge-mediation mechanism. It is shown that this oscillating inflation can sufficiently dilute the relic abundance of the string moduli for some ranges of parameters in the GMSB models.
We study a double inflation model (a preinflation + a new inflation) in supergravity and discuss the formation of primordial black holes which may be identified with massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) observed in the halo of our galaxy. The preinflation drives an inflaton for the new inflation close to the origin through supergravity effects and the new inflation naturally occurs. If the total e-fold number of the new inflation is smaller than $\sim 60$, both inflations produce cosmologically relevant density fluctuations. If the coherent inflaton oscillation after the preinflation continues until the beginning of the new inflation, density fluctuations on small cosmological scales can be set suitably large to produce black holes MACHOs of masses $\sim 1 M_{\odot}$ in a wide region of parameter space in the double inflation model.
We propose a topological inflation model in the framework of supergravity with $R$ invariance. This topological inflation model is not only free from the initial value problem of the inflaton field but also gives low reheating temperature which is favored in supergravity since the overproduction of gravitinos is avoided. Furthermore, the predicted spectrum of the density fluctuations is generally tilted, which will be tested by future observations on CMB anisotropies and large scale structure of the universe.
The M-theory, the strong-coupling heterotic string theory, presents various interesting new phenomenologies. The M-theory bulk axion is one of these. The decay constant in this context is estimated as $F_a\simeq 10^{16}$ GeV. Direct searches for the M-theory axion seem impossible because of the large decay constant. However, we point out that large isocurvature fluctuations of the M-theory axion are obtained in a hybrid inflation model, which will most likely be detectable in future satellite experiments on anisotropies of cosmic microwave background radiation.
We consider the formation of topological defects after inflation. In order to take into account the effects of the rescattering of fluctuations, we integrate the classical equation that describes the evolution of a complex scalar field on the two-dimensional lattice with a slab symmetry. The growth of fluctuations during preheating is found not to be enough for defect formation, and rather a long stage of the rescattering of fluctuations after preheating is necessary. We conclude that the topological defects are not formed if the breaking scale ηis lager than \sim (2 - 3)\times 10^{16} GeV.
We simulate the formation and the evolution of global strings taking into account the expansion of the universe and the concomitant change of the effective potential, that is, the change from the restoration stage of the global {\it U}(1)-symmetry to the broken stage. Starting from the thermal equilibrium state, we run simulations for 100 sets of different initial conditions in 2+1 dimensions. As a result, we find deviation from scale invariance. This is because the energy loss mechanism is pair annihilation rather than intercommutation, so that a string and an anti-string attract each other under a logarithmic potential.
We examine the $X$-ray spectrum from the decay of the dark-matter moduli with mass $\sim {\cal O}(100)$keV, in particular, paying attention to the line spectrum from the moduli trapped in the halo of our galaxy. It is found that with the energy resolution of the current experiments ($\sim 10$%) the line intensity is about twice stronger than that of the continuum spectrum from the moduli that spread in the whole universe. Therefore, in the future experiments with higher energy resolutions it may be possible to detect such line photons. We also investigate the $γ$-ray spectrum emitted from the decay of the multi-GeV moduli. It is shown that the emitted photons may form MeV-bump in the $γ$-ray spectrum. We also find that if the modulus mass is of the order of 10 GeV, the emitted photons at the peak of the continuum spectrum loses their energy by the scattering and the shape of the spectrum is significantly changed, which makes the constraint weaker than that obtained in the previous works.
A generic class of string theories predicts the existence of light moduli fields, and they are expected to have masses $m_ϕ$ comparable to the gravitino mass $m_{3/2}$ which is in a range of $10^{-2}$keV--1GeV in gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking theories. Such light fields with weak interactions suppressed by the Planck scale can not avoid some stringent cosmological constraints, that is, they suffer from `cosmological moduli problems'. We show that all the gravitino mass region $10^{-2}$keV $\lesssim m_{3/2} \lesssim$ 1GeV is excluded by the constraints even if we incorporate a late-time mini-inflation (thermal inflation). However, a modification of the original thermal inflation model enables the region $10^{-2}$keV $\lesssim m_{3/2} \lesssim$ 500keV to survive the constraints. It is also stressed that the moduli can be dark matter in our universe for the mass region $10^{-2}$keV $\lesssim m_ϕ\lesssim$ 100keV.
Comparing Big Bang Nucleosynthesis predictions with the light element abundances inferred from observational data, we can obtain the strong constraints on some neutrino properties, e.g. number of neutrino species, mass, lifetime. Recently the deuterium abundances were measured in high red-shift QSO absorption systems. It is expected that they are close to the primordial values, however, two groups have reported inconsistent values which are different in one order of magnitude. In this paper we show how we can constrain on $τ$ neutrino mass and its lifetime in each case when we adopt either high or low deuterium data. We find that if $0.01 \sec \lesssim τ_{\nutau} \lesssim 1 \sec$ and $10\mev \lesssim m_{\nutau} \lesssim 24\mev$, the theoretical predictions agree with the low D/H abundances. On the other hand if we adopt the high D/H abundances, we obtain the upper bound of $τ$ neutrino mass, $m_{\nutau}\lesssim 20 \mev$.
We study the dynamics of a scalar field Φwith the potential g(|Φ|^2-η^2)^2/2 (g=self-coupling constant, η=symmetry breaking scale) after inflation and make clear whether topological defects can ever be formed during preheating. In particular, we pay attention to GUT defects (η\sim 10^{15}GeV - 10^{17}GeV), and consider three types of fluctuations. The first one is produced due to parametric resonance, the second is due to the negative curvature of the potential, and the last is created during inflation. We search for the parameter region that nonthermal fluctuations of the scalar field produced through the parametric resonant decay of its homogeneous part do not lead to defect formation. We find that this region is rather wide, and the GUT defects are not produced after inflation. This fact shows that the positiveness of the effective mass square of the field and production of large fluctuations whose amplitude is as large as that of homogeneous mode are not enough conditions for full symmetry restoration.