Related papers: Thermalization after/during Reheating
We study the problem of the approach to equilibrium in a macroscopic quantum system in an abstract setting. We prove that, for a typical choice of "nonequilibrium subspace", any initial state (from the energy shell) thermalizes, and in fact…
At asymptotically high energies, thermalization in heavy ion collisions can be described via weak-coupling QCD. We present a complete treatment of how thermalization proceeds, at the parametric weak-coupling level. We show that plasma…
The potential $V(\phi)=\lambda \phi^{n}$ is responsible for the inflation of the universe as scalar field $\phi$ oscillates quickly around some point where $V(\phi)$ has a minimum. The end of this stage has an important role on the further…
We study the thermalization of an elementary quantum system modeled by a two-level atom interacting with stationary electromagnetic fields out of thermal equilibrium near a dielectric slab. The slab is held at a temperature different from…
We investigate a new bound on the low reheating temperature in a scenario where the Universe experiences early matter-domination before reheating after which the standard big bang cosmology begins. In many models of dark matter (DM), the…
Reheating is essential for transforming the cold, vacuum dominated Universe at the end of inflation into the hot thermal bath required by the Standard Model. In many well motivated inflationary models, however, the inflaton has no direct…
We investigate the production of particle Dark Matter (DM) in a minimal freeze-in model considering a non-instantaneous reheating phase after inflation. We demonstrate that for low reheating temperatures, bosonic or fermionic reheating from…
In recent years, there are increasing evidence for a thermal emission component that accompanies the overall non-thermal spectra of the prompt emission phase in GRBs. Both the temperature and flux of the thermal emission show a well defined…
Open quantum systems that comply with the master equation and detailed balance decay in a non-oscillatory manner to thermal equilibrium. Beyond the weak coupling limit, systems that break microreversibility (e.g., in the presence of…
The Standard Model Higgs boson, which has previously been shown to develop an effective vacuum expectation value during inflation, can give rise to large particle masses during inflation and reheating, leading to temporary blocking of the…
We investigate the matter creation processes during the reheating period at the end of inflation in the early Universe, by using the irreversible thermodynamic of open systems. The matter content of the Universe is assumed to consist of the…
A promising probe to unmask particle dark matter is to observe its effect on neutron stars, the prospects of which depend critically on whether captured dark matter thermalizes in a timely manner with the stellar core via repeated…
Post-inflationary reheating is a widely discussed mechanism for non-thermal production of dark matter (DM). In this scenario the momentum distribution of the produced DM particles is usually taken to be the one obtained at reheating,…
Thermalization processes degrade the states of any working medium, turning any initial state into a passive state from which no work can be extracted. Recently, it has been shown that this degradation can be avoided if two identical…
We demonstrate that quantum mechanics entails a fundamental lower bound on the thermalization time $\tau$ of any system. At finite temperature, we show that $\tau$ is bounded by half the Planckian dissipation time, $\tau \geq \tau_{\rm…
Magnetic energy around astrophysical compact objects can strongly dominate over plasma rest mass. Emission observed from these systems may be fed by dissipation of Alfv\'en wave turbulence, which cascades to small damping scales, energizing…
Hydrodynamical modeling of heavy ion collisions at RHIC suggests that the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) "thermalizes" in a remarkably short time scale, about 0.6 fm/c. We argue that this should be viewed as indicating fast isotropization, but…
The limit of small entropy production is reached in relaxing systems long after preparation, and in stationary driven systems in the limit of small driving power. Surprisingly, for extended systems this limit is not in general the…
Regarding long life particles produced during preheating after inflation as dark matter, we find that its back reaction on the field $\phi$ could lock $\phi$ in a false vacuum up to today. This false vacuum can drive the accelerated…
We study models in which the inflaton is coupled to two otherwise decoupled sectors, and the effect of preheating and related processes on their energy densities during the evolution of the universe. Over most of parameter space, preheating…