Influence of interactions on particle production induced by time-varying mass terms

Abstract: We have investigated effects of interaction terms on non-perturbative particle production. It is well known that time-varying masses induce abundant particle production. In this paper we have shown that it is possible to induce particle production even if the mass term of a particle species is not varying in time. Such particles are produced through the interactions with other fields, whose mass terms are varying due to a time-dependent background. The necessary formalism has been introduced and analytic and numerical calculations have been performed in a simple but illustrative model. The rather general result is that the amount of produced particles without time-dependent masses can be comparable with the particle density produced directly by the varying background if the strength of interaction terms is reasonably large.