Particle production from symmetry breaking after inflation and leptogenesis
Juan Garcia-Bellido, Ester Ruiz Morales
TL;DR
The paper addresses rapid symmetry breaking at the end of inflation via tachyonic preheating and its consequence: non-adiabatic production of particles coupled to the Higgs field. It combines analytical Bogoliubov treatments with lattice simulations to quantify boson and fermion production and their energy densities, showing the backreaction is typically small. It then develops a leptogenesis scenario in which right-handed neutrinos are produced non-perturbatively during symmetry breaking, deriving viable parameter ranges to generate the observed baryon asymmetry, and discusses the possibility of non-thermal superheavy dark matter and connections to ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Overall, the mechanism provides a cohesive link between post-inflation dynamics and baryogenesis as well as dark matter production in the early Universe.
Abstract
Recent studies suggest that the process of symmetry breaking after inflation typically occurs very fast, within a single oscillation of the symmetry-breaking field, due to the spinodal growth of its long-wave modes, otherwise known as `tachyonic preheating'. We show how this sudden transition from the false to the true vacuum can induce a significant production of particles, bosons and fermions, coupled to the symmetry-breaking field. We find that this new mechanism of particle production in the early Universe may have interesting consequences for the origin of supermassive dark matter and the generation of the observed baryon asymmetry through leptogenesis.