Related papers: Increasing Temperature toward the Completion of Re…
The behavior of scalar perturbations on superhorizon scales during the reheating stage is investigated by replacing the rapidly oscillating inflaton field by a perfect fluid obtained by spacetime averaging and the WKB approximation. The…
We study the possibility of reheating the universe through the evaporation of primordial black holes created at the end of inflation. This is shown to allow for the unification of inflation and dark matter under the dynamics of a single…
A formal derivation is presented of the energy transfer rate between radiation and matter due to the scattering of an isotropic distribution of resonant photons. The derivation is developed in the context of the two-level atom in the…
In the standard form of the relativistic heat equation used in astrophysics, information propagates instantaneously, rather than being limited by the speed of light as demanded by relativity. We show how this equation nonetheless follows…
In this paper, we discuss the constraints on the reheating temperature supposing an early post-reheating cosmological phase dominated by one or more simple scalar fields produced from inflaton decay and decoupled from matter and radiation.…
We calculate the number density and the energy density of a massive scalar particle conformally coupled to gravity produced by gravitational particle creation in the case the kination stage follows inflation. In this model, mode functions…
The end of inflation is connected to the standard cosmological scenario through reheating. During reheating, the inflaton oscillates around the minimum of the potential and thus decays into the daughter particles that populate the Universe…
Inflation has long been the accepted paradigm for understanding the early universe. Most models of inflation have a scalar field acting as the inflaton particle which decays after inflation during a process called reheating into standard…
Thermal freeze-out or freeze-in during a period of early matter domination can give rise to the correct dark matter abundance for $\langle \sigma_{\rm ann} v \rangle_{\rm f} < 3 \times 10^{-26}$ cm$^3$ s$^{-1}$. In the standard scenario, a…
The simplest possibility to explain the baryon asymmetry of the Universe is to assume that radiation is created asymmetrically between baryons and anti-baryons after the inflation. We propose a new mechanism of this kind where CP-violating…
The paradigm of the inflationary universe provides a possible explanation for several observed cosmological properties. In order for such solutions to be successful, the universe must convert the energy stored in the inflaton potential into…
We present gravitation as a theory in which the coordinates are distances and velocities between galaxies. We show that there are three possibilities for the Universe to expand: decelerating, constant and accelerating, and it is shown that…
We consider moduli fields interacting with thermalized relativistic matter. We determine the temperature dependence of their damping rate and find it is dominated by thermal effects in the high temperature regime, i.e. for temperatures…
A notable feature of UV freeze-in is that the relic density is strongly dependent on the highest temperatures of the thermal bath, and a common assumption is that the relevant 'highest temperature' should be the reheating temperature after…
Cosmic inflation provides a compelling framework for explaining several observed features of our Universe, but its viability depends on an efficient reheating phase that converts the inflaton's energy into Standard Model particles. This…
We perform a numerical study of the preheating mechanism of particle production in models of quintessential inflation and compare it with the usual gravitational production mechanism. We find that even for a very small coupling between the…
In standard cosmological scenarios, a heavy meta-stable field dominates the energy density of the universe after inflation. The dissipation of this field continuously sources high-energy particles. In general, the dissipation rate of this…
We highlight the general scenario of dark matter freeze-out whilst the energy density of the universe is dominated by a decoupled non-relativistic species. Decoupling during matter domination changes the freeze-out dynamics, since the…
There is no direct evidence for radiation domination prior to big-bang nucleosynthesis, and so it is useful to consider how constraints to thermally-produced axions change in non-standard thermal histories. In the low-temperature-reheating…
Common intuition tells us that if one part of a connected system is cooled continuously, the other parts should also cool down. This intuition can be given a microscopic foundation for the case of a generic quantum system coupled to a…