Published August 15, 2004 | Version v1
Journal article

What is the lowest possible reheating temperature?

  • 1. NORDITA, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen (Denmark)
  • 2. Department of Physics, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M (Denmark)

Description

We study models in which the universe exits reheating at temperatures in the MeV regime. By combining light element abundance measurements with cosmic microwave background and large scale structure data we find a fairly robust lower limit on the reheating temperature of TRH > or approx. 4 MeV at 95% C.L. However, if the heavy particle whose decay reheats the universe has a direct decay mode to neutrinos, there are some small islands left in parameter space where a reheating temperature as low as 1 MeV is allowed. The derived lower bound on the reheating temperature also leads to very stringent bounds on models with n large extra dimensions. For n=2 the bound on the compactification scale is M > or approx. 2000 TeV, and for n=3 it is 100 TeV. These are currently the strongest available bounds on such models

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review. D, Particles Fields
Journal Volume
70
Journal Issue
4
Journal Page Range
p. 043506-043506.8
ISSN
0556-2821
CODEN
PRVDAQ

Optional Information

Notes
(c) 2004 The American Physical Society