We study particle production at the preheating era in inflation models with nonminimal coupling ξφ 2 R and quartic potential λφ 4 /4 for several cases: real scalar inflaton, complex scalar inflaton and Abelian Higgs inflaton. We point out that the preheating proceeds much more violently than previously thought. If the inflaton is a complex scalar, the phase degree of freedom is violently produced at the first stage of preheating. If the inflaton is a Higgs field, the longitudinal gauge boson production is similarly violent. This is caused by a spike-like feature in the time dependence of the inflaton field, which may be understood as a consequence of the short time scale during which the effective potential or kinetic term changes suddenly. The produced particles typically have very high momenta k √ λM P . The production might be so strong that almost all the energy of the inflaton is carried away within one oscillation for ξ 2 λ O(100). This may partly change the conventional understandings of the (p)reheating after inflation with the nonminimal coupling to gravity such as Higgs inflation. We also discuss the possibility of unitarity violation at the preheating stage.

We discuss the inflationary dynamics of a system with a non-minimal coupling between the Higgs and the Ricci scalar as well as a Ricci scalar squared term. There are two scalar modes in this system, i.e. the Higgs and the spin-zero mode of the graviton, or the scalaron. We study the two-field dynamics of the Higgs and the scalaron during inflation, and clarify the condition where inflation is dominated by the Higgs/scalaron. We also find that the cut-off scale at around the vacuum is as large as the Planck scale, and hence there is no unitarity issue, although there is a constraint on the couplings from the perturbativity of the theory at around the vacuum.

Sub-GeV Dark Matter particles upscattered by cosmic rays gain enough kinetic energy to pass the thresholds of large volume detectors on Earth. We then use public Super-Kamiokande and MiniBooNE data to derive a novel limit on the scattering cross section of Dark Matter with electrons that extends down to sub-keV masses, closing a previously allowed wide region of parameter space. We finally discuss search strategies and prospects at existing and planned neutrino facilities.PACS numbers: 95.35.+d (Dark matter), 95.55.Vj (Neutrino, muon, pion, and other elementary particle detectors; cosmic ray detectors)

We propose a minimal extension of the standard model which includes only one additional complex scalar field, flavon, with flavor-dependent global U(1) symmetry. It not only explains the hierarchical flavor structure in the quark and lepton sector (including neutrino sector), but also solves the strong CP problem by identifying the CP-odd component of the flavon as the QCD axion, which we call flaxion. Furthermore, the flaxion model solves the cosmological puzzles in the standard model, i.e., origin of dark matter, baryon asymmetry of the universe, and inflation. We show that the radial component of the flavon can play the role of inflaton without isocurvature nor domain wall problems. The dark matter abundance can be explained by the flaxion coherent oscillation, while the baryon asymmetry of the universe is generated through leptogenesis.

In the purely gravitational dark matter scenario, the dark matter particle does not have any interaction except for gravitational one. We study the gravitational particle production of dark matter particle in such a minimal setup and show that correct amount of dark matter can be produced depending on the inflation model and the dark matter mass. In particular, we carefully evaluate the particle production rate from the transition epoch to the inflaton oscillation epoch in a realistic inflation model and point out that the gravitational particle production is efficient even if dark matter mass is much larger than the Hubble scale during inflation as long as it is smaller than the inflaton mass.

We consider the simplest possibility for a model of particle dark matter in which dark matter has only gravitational interaction with the standard model sector. Even in such a case, it is known that the gravitational particle production in an expanding universe may lead to a correct relic abundance depending on the inflation scale and the mass of dark matter particle. We provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the gravitational particle production of fermionic and vectorial dark matter, and emphasize that particles which are much heavier than the Hubble parameter but lighter than inflaton can also be produced abundantly.

Our electroweak vacuum may be metastable in light of the current experimental data of the Higgs/top quark mass. If this is really the case, high-scale inflation models require a stabilization mechanism of our vacuum during inflation. A possible candidate is the Higgs-inflaton/-curvature coupling because it induces an additional mass term to the Higgs during the slow roll regime. However, after inflation, the additional mass term oscillates, and it can destabilize our electroweak vacuum via production of large Higgs fluctuations during the inflaton oscillation era. In this paper, we study whether or not the Higgs-inflaton/-curvature coupling can save our vacuum by properly taking account of Higgs production during the preheating stage. We put upper bounds on the Higgsinflaton and -curvature couplings, and discuss possible dynamics that might relax them. Conclusions and Discussion 27A Mode Expansion 30 B Renormalization in Classical Lattice Simulation 31 C Thermalization after Inflation 32

Particle production in strong electromagnetic fields is a recurring theme in solid state physics, heavy ion collisions, early universe cosmology and formal quantum field theory. In this paper we discuss the Dirac equation in a background of parallel electric and magnetic fields. We review the Schwinger particle production rate, clarify the emergence of the chiral anomaly equation and compute the induced current of charged fermions. We distinguish the contributions from nonperturbative particle production, from the running of the gauge coupling constant and from nonlinearities in the effective QED Lagrangian, and clarify how these contributions arise within a single framework. We apply these results to axion inflation. A Chern-Simons coupling between the pseudoscalar particle driving cosmic inflaton and an abelian gauge group induces a dual production of gauge fields and charged fermions. We show that the resulting scalar and gravitational wave power spectra strongly depend on the fermion mass.