Related papers: Irruption of massive particle species during infla…
We describe a simple and efficient mechanism by which very heavy particles are copiously created from a primordial inflationary epoch. It works for scalar fields which are massless or very light during inflation and acquire a large mass…
We discuss thermalization through perturbative inflaton decay at the end of inflation. We find that a thermal plasma should form well before all inflatons have decayed, unless all gauge symmetries are badly broken during that epoch.…
We consider trapped inflation in a higher dimensional field space: particle production at a dense distribution of extra species points leads to a terminal velocity at which inflation can be driven in steep potentials. We compute an…
We discuss production of heavy partciles during reheating. We find that the very energetic inflaton decay products can contribute to the production of massive stable particles, either through collisions with the thermal plasma, or through…
Particle creation during inflation is considered. It could be important for species whose interaction is of gravitational strength or weaker. A complete but economical formalism is given for spin-zero and spin-half particles, and the…
The phenomenon of resonant production of particles {\it after} inflation has received much attention in the past few years. In a new application of resonant production of particles, we consider the effect of a resonance {\em during}…
We revisit the study of the phenomenology associated to a burst of particle production of a field whose mass is controlled by the inflaton field and vanishes at one given instance during inflation. This generates a bump in the correlators…
In a variety of inflation models the motion of the inflaton may trigger the production of some non-inflaton particles during inflation, for example via parametric resonance or a phase transition. Particle production during inflation leads…
Through a mechanism similar to perturbative particle scattering, particles of mass $m_\chi$ larger than the Hubble expansion rate $H_\mathrm{inf}$ during inflation can be gravitationally produced at the end of inflation without the…
The impact of particle production during inflation on the primordial curvature perturbation spectrum is investigated both analytically and numerically. We obtain an oscillatory behavior on small scales, while on large scales the spectrum is…
Typically the fluctuations generated from a decaying field during inflation do not contribute to the large scale structures. In this paper we provide an example where it is possible for a field which slowly rolls and then decays during…
We investigate the gravitational production of a scalar field $\chi$ with a mass exceeding the Hubble scale during inflation $m_\chi \gtrsim H_I$, employing both analytical and numerical approaches. We demonstrate that the steepest descent…
Massive particles produced during inflation impact soft limits of primordial correlators. Searching for these signatures presents an exciting opportunity to uncover the particle spectrum in the inflationary epoch. We present…
Interactions between the inflaton and any additional fields can lead to isolated bursts of particle production during inflation (for example from parametric resonance or a phase transition). Inflationary particle production leaves localized…
Parametric resonance has received a considerable amount of interest as a good mathematical model to describe the initial stages of the reheating phase (matter creation) in inflationary cosmology. It is also known that exponential particle…
Heavy particles with masses much bigger than the inflationary Hubble scale $H_*$, can get non-adiabatically pair produced during inflation through their couplings to the inflaton. If such couplings give rise to time-dependent masses for the…
Particle production processes in the expanding universe are described within a simple kinetic model. The equilibrium conditions for a Maxwell-Boltzmann gas with variable particle number are investigated. We find that radiation and…
We study the gravitational production of heavy X-particles of mass of the order of the inflaton mass, produced after the end of inflation. We find that, in the presence of a derivative coupling of the inflaton field or of the X-field to the…
We describe a new mechanism that gives rise to dissipation during cosmic inflation. In the simplest implementation, the mechanism requires the presence of a massive scalar field with a softly-broken global $U(1)$ symmetry, along with the…
We discuss the gravitational creation of superheavy particles $\chi$ in an inflationary scenario with a quartic potential and a non-minimal coupling between the inflaton $\varphi$ and the Ricci curvature: $\xi \varphi^2 R/2$. We show that…