Accounting for the time evolution of the equation of state parameter during reheating

One of the important parameters in cosmology is the parameter characterizing the equation of state (EoS) of the sources driving the cosmic expansion. Epochs that are dominated by radiation, matter, or scalar fields, whether they are probed either directly or indirectly, can be characterised by a unique value of this parameter. However, the EoS parameter during reheating---a phase succeeding inflation which is supposed to rapidly defrost our universe---remains to be understood satisfactorily. In order to circumvent the complexity of defining an instantaneous EoS parameter during reheating, an effective parameter $w_\mathrm{eff}$, which is an average of the EoS parameter over the duration of reheating, is usually considered. The value of $w_\mathrm{eff}$ is often chosen arbitrarily to lie in the range $-1/3 \leq w_\mathrm{eff} \leq 1$. In this work, we consider the time evolution of the EoS parameter during reheating and relate it to inflationary potentials $V(\phi)$ that behave as $\phi^p$ around the minimum, a proposal which can be applied to a wide class of inflationary models. We find that, given the index $p$, the effective EoS parameter $w_{\rm eff}$ is determined uniquely. We discuss the corresponding effects on the reheating temperature and its implications.