Moduli Stabilization in Brane Gas Cosmology with Superpotentials

Abstract

In the context of brane gas cosmology in superstring theory, we show why it is impossible to simultaneously stabilize the dilaton and the radion with a general gas of strings (including massless modes) and D-branes. Although this requires invoking a different mechanism to stabilize these moduli fields, we find that the brane gas can still play a crucial role in the early universe in assisting moduli stabilization. We show that a modest energy density of specific types of brane gas can solve the overshoot problem that typically afflicts potentials arising from gaugino condensation.

minor changes to match the journal version