Enqvist, Kari and Kasuya, Shinta and Mazumdar, Anupam (2002) Inflatonic solitons in running mass inflation. Physical Review D, 66 (4): 043505. ISSN 1550-7998
Abstract
The inflaton condensate associated with a global symmetry can fragment into quasistable Q balls, provided the inflaton oscillations give rise to an effective equation of state with negative pressure. We study chaotic inflation with a running inflaton mass and show that, depending on the sign of the radiative mass correction, the process of fragmentation into inflatonic Q balls can actually take place even though no net charge exists. If the main decay channel of the Q ball is to fermions, the universe will be reheated slowly via surface evaporation.