The Dynamics of Affleck-Dine Condensate Collapse

TL;DR

This paper investigates the nonlinear evolution of Affleck-Dine condensates in the MSSM, revealing their collapse into Q-axitons rather than Q-balls, with implications for baryogenesis and dark matter.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed numerical analysis of the collapse process, showing the formation of Q-axitons and their distinct properties from Q-balls.

Findings

Condensates collapse into Q-axitons, not Q-balls.

Energy and charge radiated during collapse are quantified.

Implications for baryogenesis and dark matter are discussed.

Abstract

In the MSSM, cosmological scalar field condensates formed along flat directions of the scalar potential (Affleck-Dine condensates) are typically unstable with respect to formation of Q-balls, a type of non-topological soliton. We consider the dynamical evolution of the Affleck-Dine condensate in the MSSM. We discuss the creation and linear growth, in F- and D-term inflation models, of the quantum seed perturbations which in the non-linear regime catalyse the collapse of the condensate to non-topological soliton lumps. We study numerically the evolution of the collapsing condensate lumps and show that the solitons initially formed are not in general Q-balls, but Q-axitons, a pseudo-breather which can have very different properties from Q-balls of the same charge. We calculate the energy and charge radiated from a spherically symmetric condensate lump as it evolves into a Q-axiton. We also discuss the implications for baryogenesis and dark matter.