English

Hot Big Bang from inflation without the inflaton reheating

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-04-26 v2

Abstract

According to the standard lore, a prolonged inflation leaves a quantum field theory in a cold, low entropy state. Thus, some mechanism is needed to reheat this post-inflationary state, leaving a hot, thermal, radiation-dominated Universe. Typically, reheating is achieved coupling the inflaton field to the QFT degrees of freedom. We argue that the nonequilibrium dynamics of a non-conformal QFT in (post-)inflationary background space-time can produce hot quark-gluon plasma with the reheating temperature of order the inflationary Hubble scale, without the inflaton coupling.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2301.09456,
  title  = {Hot Big Bang from inflation without the inflaton reheating},
  author = {Alex Buchel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.09456},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

10 pages, 1 figure. v2: refs and supplemental material added