Multidimensional cosmological models: cosmological and astrophysical implications

We investigate four-dimensional effective theories which are obtained by dimensional reduction of multidimensional cosmological models with factorizable geometry and consider the interaction between conformal excitations of the internal space (geometrical moduli excitations) and Abelian gauge fields. It is assumed that the internal space background can be stabilized by minima of an effective potential. The conformal excitations over such a background have the form of massive scalar fields (gravitational excitons) propagating in the external spacetime. We discuss cosmological and astrophysical implications of the interaction between gravexcitons and four-dimensional photons. In particular, we show that due to the experimental bounds on the variation of the fine structure constant, gravexcitons should decay before nucleosynthesis starts. For a successful nucleosynthesis the masses of the decaying gravexcitons should be m > ∼ 10GeV. Furthermore, we discuss the possible contribution of gravexcitons to UHECR. It is shown that, at energies E ∼ 10eV, the decay length of gravexcitons with masses m > ∼ 10GeV is very small, but that for m < ∼ 10GeV it becomes much larger than the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cut-off distance. Finally, we investigate the possibility for gravexciton-photon oscillations in strong magnetic fields of astrophysical objects. The corresponding estimates indicate that even the high magnetic field strengths B of magnetars (special types of pulsars with B > Bcritical ∼ 4.4 × 10 13 Gauss) are not sufficient for an efficient and copious production of gravexcitons. PACS number(s): 04.50.+h, 11.25.Mj, 98.80.Jk