title: Vacuum sampling in the landscape during inflation.
abstract: We consider the phenomenological consequences of sampling multiple vacua during inflation motivated by an enormous landscape. A generic consequence of this sampling is the formation of domain walls, characterized by the scale mu of the barriers that partition the accessed vacua. We find that the success of big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) implies mu > or = 10 TeV, as long as the sampled vacua have a nondegeneracy larger than O(MeV4). Otherwise, the walls will dominate and eventually form black holes that must reheat the universe sufficiently for BBN to take place; in this case, we obtain mu > or = 10(-5)MP. These black holes are not allowed to survive and contribute to cosmic dark matter density.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973-5000, USA.
authors.forename: Hooman
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Davoudiasl
authors.forename: Saswat
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sarangi
authors.forename: Gary
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Shiu