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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.…
Even if nothing but a light Higgs is observed at the LHC, suggesting that the Standard Model is unmodified up to scales far above the weak scale, Higgs physics can yield surprises of fundamental significance for cosmology. As has long been…
In inflationary cosmology, cosmic reheating after inflation sets the initial conditions for the hot big bang. We investigate how CMB data can be used to study the effective potential and couplings of the inflaton during reheating and…
We compute numerically the reheating temperature due to the gravitational production of conformally coupled superheavy particles during the phase transition from the end of inflation to the beginning of kination in two different…
Current cosmological models require the universe to be in a very smooth initial state before the onset of inflation, a situation to which Penrose ascribes a vanishingly small probability, leading to his proposal of a Conformal Cyclic…
At the end of inflation, the coherent oscillations of the inflaton field may resonantly amplify the long wavelength modes of both bosons and fermions coupled to it. We study the resonant production of both kinds of particles during…
We employ a viable $f(R)$ gravity model capable of giving an inflationary phase in order to study the subsequent reheating phase due to particle creation at the expense of energy in the scalaron field. Since quantum mechanics is expected to…
We reconsider a recently proposed warm G-inflation scenario in which the Galileon scalar field concurrently dissipates its kinetic energy as the radiation fluid throughout inflation and the universe smoothly enters into a radiation…
Inflation ends with the formation of a Bose condensate of inflatons. We show that in hybrid inflation models this condensate is typically unstable with respect to spatial perturbations and can fragment to condensate lumps. The case of…
Reheating after inflation occurs due to particle production by the oscillating inflaton field. In this paper we describe the perturbative approach to reheating, and then concentrate on effects beyond the perturbation theory. They are…
We consider the possibility that the vacuum energy density of the MSSM (Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model) flat direction condensate involving the Higgses H_1 and H_2 is responsible for inflation. We also discuss how the finely tuned…
We show that the decay of the inflaton field may be incomplete, while nevertheless successfully reheating the universe and leaving a stable remnant that accounts for the present dark matter abundance. We note, in particular, that since the…
We consider one-loop thermal effects on the decay of a scalar field zero mode initially dominating the energy density of the universe. We assume fermionic decay channels and take into account the effects due to both particle and hole…
We study a model of quintessential inflation in the context of Palatini gravity. As a representative example, we consider the Peebles-Vilenkin model of quintessential inflation with a small non-minimal coupling to gravity, which is…
Post-inflationary reheating phase is usually said to be solely governed by the decay of coherently oscillating inflaton into radiation. In this submission, we explore a new avenue toward reheating through the evaporation of primordial black…
We study the problem of scalar particle production after inflation by a rapidly oscillating inflaton field. We use the framework of the chaotic inflation scenario with quartic and quadratic inflaton potentials. Particular attention is paid…
We present a model of inflation where the inflaton is accommodated as a phantom field which exhibits an initial transient pole behavior and then decays into a quintessence field which is responsible for a radiation era. We must stress that…
In simple inflationary cosmological scenarios the near-exponential growth can be followed by a long period in which the Universe is dominated by the oscillating inflaton condensate. The condensate is initially almost homogeneous, but…
The reheating of the universe after hybrid inflation proceeds through the nucleation and subsequent collision of large concentrations of energy density in the form of bubble-like structures moving at relativistic speeds. This generates a…
This thesis is dedicated to analysing the generation and destruction of quantum correlations in the context of inflationary cosmology and an experiment of 'analogue' preheating. Inflation is a phase of accelerated expansion of the Universe,…