The Physics of Q-balls

In this thesis we investigate the stationary properties and formation process of a class of nontopological solitons, namely Q-balls. We explore both the quantum-mechanical and classical stability of Q-balls that appear in polynomial, gravity-mediated and gauge-mediated potentials. By presenting our detailed analytic and numerical results, we show that absolutely stable non-thermal Q-balls may exist in any kinds of the above potentials. The latter two types of potentials are motivated by Affleck-Dine baryogenesis, which is one of the best candidate theories to solve the present baryon asymmetry. By including quantum corrections in the scalar potentials, a naturally formed condensate in a post-inflationary era can be classically unstable and fragment into Q-balls that can be long-lived or decay into the usual baryons/leptons as well as the lightest supersymmeric particles. This scenario naturally provides the baryon asymmetry and the similarity of the energy density between baryons and dark matter in the Universe. Introducing detailed lattice simulations, we argue that the formation, thermalisation and stability of these Q-balls depend on the properties of models involved with supersymmetry breaking.