General cosmological features of the Einstein-Yang-Mills-dilaton system in string theories

We establish the main features of homogeneous and isotropic dilaton, metric and Yang-Mills field configurations in a cosmological framework. Special attention is paid to the energy exchange between the dilaton and the Yang-Mills field and, in particular, a new energy exchange term is identified. Implications for the Polonyi problem in 4-dimensional string models and in dynamical supersymmetry breaking scenarios are discussed.