Modular Cosmology, Thermal Inflation, Baryogenesis and Predictions for Particle Accelerators

Modular cosmology is plagued by overproduction of unwanted relics, gravitinosand especially moduli, at relatively low energy scales. Thermal inflationprovides a compelling solution to this moduli problem, but invalidates mostbaryogenesis scenarios. We propose a simple model in which the MSSM plusneutrino mass term $(LH_u)^2$ is supplemented by a minimal flaton sector todrive the thermal inflation, and make two crucial assumptions: the flatonvacuum expectation value generates the $\mu$-term of the MSSM and $m_L^2 +m_{H_u}^2 < 0$. The second assumption is particularly interesting in that itviolates a well known constraint, implying that there exists a nearby deepnon-MSSM vacuum, and provides a clear signature of our model which can betested at future particle accelerators. We show that our model leads to thermalinflation followed by Affleck-Dine leptogenensis along the $LH_u$ flatdirection. A key feature of our leptogenesis scenario is that the $H_uH_d$ flatdirection is also induced to temporarily acquire a large value, playing acrucial role in the leptogenesis, as well as dynamically shielding the fieldconfiguration from the deep non-MSSM minimum, ensuring that the fields relaxinto our MSSM vacuum.Comment: v3; 19 pages, 3 figures; added a reference for section