Thermal production of superheavy magnetic monopoles in the new inflationary-Universe scenario

In the new inflationary-Universe scenario monopoles are created in rare, very energetic particle collisions, and their predicted abundance, which is exp(-2m0TRH), is tiny, where m0=monopole mass, TRH=reheat temperature. During the reheating process the effective monopole mass oscillates about m0 as the vacuum expectation value of the scalar field oscillates about the symmetry-breaking minimum of the scalar potential. We find that owing to this effect monopole production is greatly increased, with 2m0TRH being replaced by 2f*m0TRH, where 0<f*<1 depends upon the form of the scalar potential and the details of reheating.