Excited Q-balls in the MSSM with gravity mediated supersymmetry breaking

The relaxation of exited Q-balls is studied by numerical simulations in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with supersymmetry broken by a gravity mediated mechanism. It is found that there is a suppression factor of O(10−2) in the rate at which a Q-ball can emit their excess energy compared to the rate set by the dynamical scale of the field, m. Furthermore, it is noted that a Q-ball can withstand a large amount of excess energy without losing a significant amount of its charge. The cosmological importance of these properties are considered for Q-balls in the thermal bath of the early universe.