Reheating and dangerous relics in pre-big bang string cosmology

Abstract

We discuss the mechanism of reheating in pre-big bang string cosmology and we calculate the amount of moduli and gravitinos produced gravitationally and in scattering processes of the thermal bath. We find that this abundance always exceeds the limits imposed by big-bang nucleosynthesis, and significant entropy production is required. The exact amount of entropy needed depends on the details of the high curvature phase between the dilaton-driven inflationary era and the radiation era. We show that the domination and decay of the zero-mode of a modulus field, which could well be the dilaton, or of axions, suffices to dilute moduli and gravitinos. In this context, baryogenesis can be accomodated in a simple way via the Affleck-Dine mechanism and in some cases the Affleck-Dine condensate could provide both the source of entropy and the baryon asymmetry.