The Radionactive Universe

Abstract

In a large class of extra-dimensional models, a scalar degree of freedom known as the radion is long-lived, or even stable, on cosmological scales. In this paper we investigate the impact of radionactivity on the evolution of the universe. We demonstrate that whether the radion overcloses the universe, constitutes the dark matter, is the inflaton, the curvaton, or does not play any role in cosmology, depends crucially on the ratio between the energy densities stored in the radion and in the inflaton at the time of inflation. We discuss the general difficulties reconciling models with low compactification scale (i.e., TeV scale) with the simple picture of inflation.