2001/05/31 by John McDonald, J. McDonald · 3 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Fragmentation (computing) #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Inflation (cosmology) #Inflaton #Lambda #Particle physics #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Superpotential #Supersymmetry #Theoretical physics #astro-ph #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.66.043525
published as Phys.Rev. D66 (2002) 043525 · 18 pages, LaTeX. Discussion of perturbation growth and validity of approximations clarified. Conclusions unchanged. Final version to be published in Physical Review D
arxiv created 2002/07/09 · openalex publication_date 2002/08/22 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Inflation ends with the formation of a Bose condensate of inflatons. We show that in hybrid inflation models this condensate is typically unstable with respect to spatial perturbations and can fragment to condensate lumps. The case of D-term inflation is considered as an example and it is shown that fragmentation occurs if \ensuremathλ\ensuremath\gtrsim0.2g, where \ensuremathλ is the superpotential coupling and g is the U(1)FI gauge coupling. Condensate fragmentation can result in an effective enhancement of inflaton annihilations over decays as the main mode of reheating. In the case of D-term inflation models in which the standard model fields carry U(1)FI charges, if condensate fragmentation occurs then reheating is dominated by inflaton annihilations, typically resulting in the overproduction of thermal gravitinos. Fragmentation may also have important consequences for SUSY flat direction dynamics and for preheating.