lead to significant particle production in this case $^{78}$. • Instant preheating: An efficient bout of particle creation occurs when the inflaton crosses the origin, which happens twice in every oscillation. The reason is that fields which are coupled to the inflaton are massless near the point of enhanced symmetry (see Sec. VI B 2). Mainly electroweak gauge fields and gauginos are then created as they have the largest coupling to the flat direction. The production takes place in a short interval, Δ t ∼ ( gm$_{φ}$φ$_{0}$ $_{)}$− 1 / $^{2}$, where φ$_{0}$ ∼ 10 14 GeV is the initial amplitude of the inflaton oscillation, during which quanta with a physical momentum k ≤ ( gm$_{φ}$φ$_{0}$ ) 1 / 2 are produced. The number density of gauge/gaugino degrees of freedom is given by [89, 118] As the inflaton VEV is rolling back to its maximum value φ$_{0}$ , the mass of the produced quanta g 〈 φ ( t ) 〉 increases. The gauge and gaugino fields can (perturbatively) decay to the fields which are not coupled to the inflaton, for instance to (s)quarks. Note that (s)quarks are not coupled to the flat direction, hence they remain massless throughout the oscillations. The total decay rate of the gauge/gaugino fields is then given by Γ = C ( g $^{2}$/ 48 π ) gφ , where C ∼ O (10) is a numerical factor counting for the multiplicity of final states. The decay of the gauge/gauginos become efficient when 〈 φ 〉 ≃ (48 πm$_{φ}$φ$_{0}$/Cg $^{3}$) 1 / $^{2}$, where we have used 〈 φ ( t ) 〉 ≈ φ$_{0}$m$_{φ}$t , which is valid when m$_{φ}$t ≪ 1, and Γ ≃ t − $^{1}$, where t represents the time that has elapsed from the moment that the inflaton crossed the origin. Note that the decay is very quick compared with the frequency of inflaton oscillations, i.e. Γ ≫ m$_{φ}$ . It produces relativistic (s)quarks with an energy [89]: n$_{g}$ ≈ ( gm$_{φ}$φ$_{0}$ ) 3 / 2 8 π 3 . (351) E = 1 2 gφ ( t ) ≃ ( 48 πm$_{φ}$φ$_{0}$ Cg ) 1 / 2 . (352) 78 One interesting observation for the LLe direction is that its VEV naturally gives masses to the Hy- percharged fields, thus breaking the conformal invariance required for the photons [726, 727]. The ex- cited hypercharge can be converted into normal electromagnetism after the electroweak phase transition. This would seed vector perturbations for the observed large scale magnetic field in the intergalactic medium [728]. 160