Oscillating scalar fields are useful to model a variety of matter components in the Universe. One or more scalar fields participate in the reheating process after inflation, while at much lower energies scalar fields are robust dark matter candidates. Pertaining to structure formation in these models, it is well known that inhomogeneities of the Klein-Gordon field are unstable above the characteristic de Broglie wavelength. In this paper we show that such instability implies the existence of a threshold amplitude for the collapse of primordial fluctuations. We use this threshold to correctly predict the cutoff scale of the matter power spectrum in the scalar field dark matter model. Furthermore, for a Klein-Gordon field during reheating we show that this same threshold allows for abundant production of structure (oscillons but not necessarily black holes). Looking at the production of primordial black holes (PBHs) in this scenario we note that the sphericity condition yields a much lower probability of PBH formation at the end of inflation. Remarkably, even after meeting a such stringent condition, we find that PBHs may be overproduced during reheating. We finally constrain the epochs at which an oscillating Klein-Gordon field could dominate the early universe.

• Received 11 May 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.96.063504