Dark matter and dark energy from pockets of gravity created by quantum
  tunneling of the inflaton potential
  It is usually assumed that during the reheating period of inflation the
inflaton field behaves coherently and follows a classical path. It is pointed
out that a background inflaton field \phi_0 falling down a potential density
V(\phi) can and frequently should undergo a quantum tunneling effect involving
an energy \DeltaV<<V, so that it becomes possible to create perturbative
inflatons \phi's, which, in turn, can disintegrate into other particles. We
argue for this scenario using large field inflation assumed during a typical
slow-roll regime, and typical values for the physical quantities associated
with the tunneling effect are worked out. It is shown how, as a result of these
highly energetic and localized processes, the components of the metric receive
strong gradients within a small volume. These pockets of gravity can gravitate
both attractively or repulsively, since the Ricci tensor contains squared
partial derivative terms with either positive or negative sign, so they can be
a component of either dark matter or dark energy. As the Universe expands the
curvature of the pockets weakens as 1/a^2, where a(t) is the scale factor of
the expansion, but it is shown that, as long as the integral over the
gravitating gravitational fields of the pocket is done over all of the
expanding volume of the pocket, the value of the integral is not affected by
the expansion. Geometrically speaking, the gravitation of a pocket is produced
by the convolutions of the metric inside it; as the Universe expands the
convolutions are over a much large volume so they are flatter, but an
integration over the larger volume gives the same result as before the
expansion. It is just a change of scale of the same geometry. A common cause
(inflaton quantum tunneling) for both dark matter and dark energy explains why
their quantities are of the same order of magnitude.
