Related papers: When Does the Inflaton Decay?
Following inflation, the Universe may pass through an early matter-dominated phase supported by the oscillating inflaton condensate. Initially small fluctuations in the condensate grow gravitationally on subhorizon scales and can collapse…
Inflation models can have an early phase of inflation where the evolution of the inflaton is driven by quantum fluctuations before entering the phase driven by the slope of the scalar field potential. For a Coleman-Weinberg potential this…
We study preheating in DBI hybrid inflation. Preheating occurs since the matter fields are non-minimally coupled to the inflaton. Despite the coupling being small, preheating happens as a narrow parametric resonance in which matter fields…
We investigate the dynamics of the Standard Model higgs with a minimal coupling to gravity during and after inflation. In the regime where the Standard Model vacuum is stable, we find that the higgs becomes a light spectator field after…
We numerically investigate the decay, via parametric resonance, of the inflaton with an m^2 phi^2 potential into a scalar matter field with a symmetry breaking potential. We consider the case where symmetry breaking takes place during…
We study the decay of the inflaton in a renormalizable two scalar theory. Since the dynamics of the system is dominated by states with large occupation numbers which admit a semiclassical description, the decay can be studied by solving the…
We present a model where inflation and Dark Matter takes place via a single scalar field phi. Without introducing any new parameters we are able unify inflation and Dark Matter using a scalar field phi that accounts for inflation at an…
In the Einstein frame picture of Starobinky's $R^2$ inflation model, cosmic inflation is driven by a slowly rolling inflaton field, called scalaron, and followed by a coherently oscillating scalaron phase. Since the scalaron oscillates…
We develop a covariant method for studying the effects of a reheating phase on the primordial adiabatic and isocurvature perturbations in two-field models of inflation. To model the decay of the scalar fields into radiation at the end of…
It is typically assumed that during reheating the inflaton decays with a constant decay width. However, this is not guaranteed and can have a strong impact on the dark matter (DM) genesis. In the context of the ultraviolet (UV) freeze-in…
We discuss the possibility of producing a light dark photon dark matter through a coupling between the dark photon field and the inflaton. The dark photon with a large wavelength is efficiently produced due to the inflaton motion during…
We investigate the problem of perturbative reheating and its effects on the evolution of the curvature perturbations in tachyonic inflationary models. We derive the equations governing the evolution of the scalar perturbations for a system…
We calculate the power spectrum of curvature perturbations when the inflaton field is rolling over the top of a local maximum of a potential. We show that the evolution of the field can be decomposed into a late-time attractor, which is…
Effects caused by an additional massive scalar field interacting with an inflaton field are analyzed. Inflation is shown to have two stages, the first of which is dominant and characterized by ultraslow dynamics of the inflaton field.…
In hybrid inflation, the inflaton generically has a tadpole due to gravitational effects in supergravity, which significantly changes the inflaton dynamics in high-scale supersymmetry. We point out that the tadpole can be cancelled if there…
At the end of inflation, dynamical instability can rapidly deposit the energy of homogeneous cold inflaton into excitations of other fields. This process, known as preheating, is rather violent, inhomogeneous and non-linear, and has to be…
We consider that the pre-inflation era is radiation-dominated, transiting smoothly to the inflationary era. We work out in detail the dynamics of inflaton fluctuations across the phase transition and the proper choices of initial vacuum…
We investigate the validity of effective field theory methods and the decoupling of heavy fields during inflation. Considering models of inflation in which the inflaton is coupled to a heavy (super-Hubble) degree of freedom initially in its…
While inflaton loops in the Euclidean vacuum generally have a negligible contribution to the power spectrum, loop effects can be substantially larger when the inflaton is in a non-thermal vacuum state. As an example, we show that in a…
In the inflationary universe, there can be light fields other than the inflaton. We explore a possibility that such light fields source the primordial perturbations, while minimally affecting the inflaton dynamics. We show that during…