TY - JOUR

T1 - Resonant decay of flat directions

AU - Postma, Marieke

AU - Mazumdar, Anupam

N1 - 20 pages, 4 figures

PY - 2004/1/20

Y1 - 2004/1/20

N2 - We study preheating, i.e., non-perturbative resonant decay, of flat direction fields, concentrating on MSSM flat directions and the right handed sneutrino. The difference between inflaton preheating and flaton preheating, is that the potential is more constraint in the latter case. The effects of a complex driving field, quartic couplings in the potential, and the presence of a thermal bath are important and cannot be neglected. Preheating of MSSM flat directions is typically delayed due to out-of-phase oscillations of the real and imaginary components and may be preceded by perturbative decay or $Q$-ball formation. Particle production due to the violation of adiabaticity is expected to be inefficient due to back reaction effects. For a small initial sneutrino VEV, $ \lesssim m_N/h$ with $m_N$ the mass of the right handed sneutrino and $h$ a yakawa coupling, there are tachyonic instabilities. The $D$-term quartic couplings do not generate an effective mass for the tachyonic modes, making it an efficient decay channel. It is unclear how thermal scattering affects the resonance.

AB - We study preheating, i.e., non-perturbative resonant decay, of flat direction fields, concentrating on MSSM flat directions and the right handed sneutrino. The difference between inflaton preheating and flaton preheating, is that the potential is more constraint in the latter case. The effects of a complex driving field, quartic couplings in the potential, and the presence of a thermal bath are important and cannot be neglected. Preheating of MSSM flat directions is typically delayed due to out-of-phase oscillations of the real and imaginary components and may be preceded by perturbative decay or $Q$-ball formation. Particle production due to the violation of adiabaticity is expected to be inefficient due to back reaction effects. For a small initial sneutrino VEV, $ \lesssim m_N/h$ with $m_N$ the mass of the right handed sneutrino and $h$ a yakawa coupling, there are tachyonic instabilities. The $D$-term quartic couplings do not generate an effective mass for the tachyonic modes, making it an efficient decay channel. It is unclear how thermal scattering affects the resonance.

KW - inflation

KW - baryon asymmetry

U2 - 10.1088/1475-7516/2004/01/005

DO - 10.1088/1475-7516/2004/01/005

M3 - Journal article

VL - 2004

JO - Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

JF - Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

SN - 1475-7516

IS - 1

M1 - 5

ER -