Related papers: Maximal temperature of strongly-coupled dark secto…
We consider the possibility of regarding the maximum temperature $\tm$ of a plasma of inflaton decay products as a Hagedorn temperature connected with the transition from an inflaton-dominated epoch to a radiation-dominated universe.…
We investigate the thermalization process of the Universe after inflation to determine the evolution of the effective temperature. The time scale of thermalization is found to be so long that it delays the evolution of the effective…
In the first stages of inflationary reheating, the temperature of the radiation produced by inflaton decays is typically higher than the commonly defined reheating temperature $T_{RH} \sim (\Gamma_\phi M_P)^{1/2}$ where $\Gamma_\phi$ is the…
From a model-building perspective, the inflationary sector might very well have no direct couplings to other species, apart from inevitable gravitational interactions. Within the context of General Relativity, a thermal universe can still…
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…
We propose a two-phase reheating scenario where the initial preheating dynamics is described by an effective dynamics followed by the standard perturbative reheating. Some of the important universal results of lattice simulation during…
We study first order phase transitions that occur when the temperature of the system increases and we identify the conditions that lead to super-heating, a phase where the system can heat up arbitrarily. First order phase transitions with…
The reheating phase after inflation is one of the least observationally constrained epochs in the evolution of the Universe. The forthcoming gravitational wave observatories will enable us to constrain at least some of the non-standard…
We present a model where the inflaton field behaves like quintessence at late times, generating the present phase of accelerated expansion. This is achieved within the framework of warm inflation, in particular the Warm Little Inflaton…
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…
The prediction of a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of curvature and tensor fluctuations is among the main features of cosmic inflation. The current measurements of the primordial fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB)…
A safe way to reheat the universe, in models of natural and quadratic inflation, is through shift symmetric couplings between the inflaton $\phi$ and the Standard Model (SM), since they do not generate loop corrections to the potential…
There is a guaranteed background of stochastic gravitational waves produced in the thermal plasma in the early universe. Its energy density per logarithmic frequency interval scales with the maximum temperature $T_{\rm max}$ which the…
In an approach to noncommutative gauge theories, where the full noncommutative behavior is delimited by the presence of the UV and IR cutoffs, we consider the possibility of describing a system at a temperature T in a box of size L.…
We perform a systematic analysis of dark matter production during post-inflationary reheating. Following the period of exponential expansion, the inflaton begins a period of damped oscillations as it decays. These oscillations and the…
According to the standard lore, a prolonged inflation leaves a quantum field theory in a cold, low entropy state. Thus, some mechanism is needed to reheat this post-inflationary state, leaving a hot, thermal, radiation-dominated Universe.…
We revisit the framework of axion-like inflation in view of the possibility that the coupling of the inflaton to a non-Abelian topological charge density could lead to the generation of a rapidly thermalizing heat bath. Both dispersive…
The theory of reheating of the Universe after inflation is developed. The transition from inflation to the hot Universe turns out to be strongly model-dependent and typically consists of several stages. Immediately after inflation the field…
In this paper we study the reheating constraints on inflationary models considering perturbatively decaying inflaton. Important difference with the existing analysis is the inclusion of explicit decaying dynamics of inflaton during…
We assume axion-like particles (ALPs) to provide the full dark matter abundance and derive various lower bounds on the ALP mass. We contrast the post- and pre-inflationary symmetry breaking cases and present allowed regions in the plane of…