  We study the evolution of perturbations during the domination and decay of a
massive particle species whose mass and decay rate are allowed to depend on the
expectation value of a light scalar field. We specialize in the case where the
light field is slow-rolling, showing that during a phase of inhomogeneous
mass-domination and decay the isocurvature perturbation of the light field is
converted into a curvature perturbation with an efficiency which is nine times
larger than when the mass is fixed. We derive a condition on the annihilation
cross section and on the decay rate for the domination of the massive particles
and we show that standard model particles cannot dominate the universe before
nucleosynthesis. We also compare this mechanism with the curvaton model.
Finally, observational signatures are discussed. A cold dark matter
isocurvature mode can be generated if the dark matter is produced out of
equilibrium by both the inflaton and the massive particle species decay.
Non-Gaussianities are present: they are chi-square deviations. However, they
might be too small to be observable.
