the dark matter candidate in direct detection [740]. E. Stochastic initial conditions for low scale inflation It is conceivable that the universe gets trapped in a metastable vacuum at earlier stages, irrespective of how it began. Metastable vacua are ubiquitous in string theory, see the discussion in section VIII D. Inflation can be driven from one vacuum to another, either via quantum tunneling or via transient phase of non-inflationary dynamics [160]. In any case, it is important to note that these high scale inflation provides a natural initial condition for MSSM inflation. Let us imagine that there are almost degenerate metastable vacua. Once the energy den- sity of the false vacuum dominates, inflation begins and the universe undergoes accelerated expansion with a constant Hubble rate H$_{false}$ . False vacuum is not stable and decays via bubble nucleation. The rate per volume for the decay of a metastable vacuum to the true vacuum is given by: Γ /V = C exp ( − Δ S$_{E}$ ) , (357) where C is a one-loop determinant and Δ S$_{E}$ is the difference in Euclidean actions between the instanton and the background with larger cosmological constant. The determinant C can at most be C < ∼ M 4 $_{P}$, simply because M$_{P}$ is the largest scale available, and estimates (ignoring metric fluctuations) give a value as small as C ∼ $_{r}$− 4 0 , with r$_{0}$ the instanton bubble radius [741, 742]. Therefore a typical decay rate in a (comoving) Hubble volume is given by Especially with a large Hubble scale H$_{false}$ , the associated decay time is much longer than $_{H}$− 1 $_{false}$, given that typically Δ S$_{E}$ ≫ 1. This implies that most of the space is locked in the false vacuum and inflate forever, while bubble nucleation creates pockets of true vacuum whose size grow only linearly in time. Here we will concentrate on one such true vacuum, where MSSM flat directions can be excited. During false vacuum inflation quantum fluctuations displace any scalar field whose mass is smaller than H$_{false}$ . The question is whether these fluctuations can push the MSSM 166 1. Quantum fluctuations of MSSM flat directions Γ < ∼ M 4 P H 3 false exp ( − Δ S$_{E}$ ) . (358)