Affleck-Dine dynamics, Q-ball formation and thermalisation

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the dynamics of Affleck-Dine fields, Q-ball formation, and thermalisation in the early universe, combining analytical and numerical methods to reveal a three-stage reheating process involving unique thermal Q-balls.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analytical and numerical study of AD dynamics and Q-ball formation, highlighting the distinct thermalisation process with thermal Q-balls in different mediation models.

Findings

Identified three stages of semiclassical evolution: pre-thermalisation, bubble collisions, and thermalisation.

Discovered that the thermalisation stage lasts longer compared to standard reheating scenarios.

Found that thermal Q-balls play a crucial role in the thermalisation process.

Abstract

We present both analytically and numerically the consistent analysis from the Affleck-Dine (AD) dynamics to the subsequent semiclassical evolution in both gravity-mediated and gauge-mediated models. We obtain analytically the elliptic motions in the AD dynamics as the analogy of the well-known Kepler-problem, and by solving the equations of motion in a lattice, we find that the semiclassical evolution goes through three distinct stages as a nonequilibrium process of reheating the Universe: pre-thermalisation, bubble collisions and thermalisation. We report that the second stage of our case lasts rather long compared to the second stage of the reheating case, and the thermalisation process is unique due to the presence of ``thermal Q-balls''.