Thermal effects and finite-temperature cosmology in perturbatively stabilized large volume scenarios

Abstract

We analyze finite-temperature effects in the perturbative Large Volume Scenario (LVS), examining the dynamics of thermalized Kähler moduli and the stability of thermally induced vacua. We determine the maximum decompactification temperature $T_{\max}$, showing its dependence on winding-loop corrections in the effective theory. Moduli stabilization arises from perturbative logarithmic loop corrections to the Kähler potential, with higher-derivative $F^4$ terms used to test vacuum robustness. We derive cosmological implications, including bounds on reheating, and show that the model favors high scale inflationary scenarios with the heavy modulus decaying before dominating the energy density of the universe. We also analyze thermal metastability, demonstrating that the recovery of the $T=0$ vacuum is sensitive to the post-inflationary thermal history, potentially yielding either an AdS vacuum, a metastable phase, or a stable dS configuration. We conclude by briefly discussing the relevance of finite-temperature effects for entropy-assisted tunneling and the broader string landscape.