Related papers: Reheating after Axion Inflation
The coupling of an axion-like particle driving inflation to the Standard Model particle content through a Chern-Simons term generically sources a dual production of massless helical gauge fields and chiral fermions. We demonstrate that the…
We analyze the dynamics of inflationary models with a coupling of the inflaton $\phi$ to gauge fields of the form $\phi F \tilde{F}/f$, as in the case of axions. It is known that this leads to an instability, with exponential amplification…
The axion is a well-motivated candidate for the inflaton, as the radiative corrections that spoil many single-field models are avoided by virtue of its shift symmetry. However, axions generically couple to gauge sectors. As the axion…
A new mechanism is presented which can reheat the Universe in non-oscillatory models of inflation, where the inflation period is followed by a period dominated by the kinetic density for the inflaton field (kination). The mechanism…
In this paper, we examine the viability of inflation models with a spectator axion field coupled to both gravitational and SU(2) gauge fields via Chern-Simons couplings. Requiring phenomenological success of the axion-SU(2) sector…
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…
We investigate axion inflation where the gravitational Chern-Simons term is coupled to a periodic function of the inflaton. We find that tensor perturbations with different polarizations are amplified in different ways by the Chern-Simons…
Models of inflation based on axions, which owe their popularity to the robustness against UV corrections, have also a very distinct class of signatures. The relevant interactions of the axion are a non-perturbative oscillating contribution…
Axion inflation, i.e. an axion-like inflaton coupled to an Abelian gauge field through a Chern-Simons interaction, comes with a rich and testable phenomenology. This is particularly true in the strong backreaction regime, where the gauge…
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…
We study the general multi-axion systems, focusing on the possibility of large field inflation driven by axions. We find that through axion mixing from a non-diagonal metric on the moduli space and/or from St\"uckelberg coupling to a U(1)…
We propose the first model of warm inflation in which the particle production emerges directly from coupling the inflaton to Standard Model particles. Warm inflation, an early epoch of sustained accelerated expansion at finite temperature,…
A decade ago, the first leptogenesis model based on inflation was proposed, where the complex phase of the inflaton field carries lepton number. If the inflaton field is an axion, it can couple to gravitational waves and gauge fields via.…
By using a No-Scale Supergravity model, which was proved well to explain WMAP observations appropriately, a mechanism of preheating just after the end of inflation is investigated. By using the canonically normalized and diagonalized…
Slow-roll inflation is a successful paradigm. However we find that even a small coupling of the inflaton to other light fields can dramatically alter the dynamics and predictions of inflation. As an example, the inflaton can generically…
We study the early stages of an oscillatory reheating phase in an inflaton plus spectator axion-SU(2) system, including both an axion-gauge Chern-Simons coupling $\chi F\tilde{F}$ and a gravitational Chern-Simons coupling $\chi R\tilde{R}$.…
We study preheating in theories where the inflaton couples derivatively to scalar and gauge fields. Such couplings may dominate in natural models of inflation, in which the flatness of the inflaton potential is related to an approximate…
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 models of inflation driven by an axion-like pseudoscalar field, the inflaton, a, may couple to the standard model hypercharge via a Chern-Simons-type interaction, $L \subset a/(4\Lambda) F\tilde{F}$. This coupling results in explosive…
During the last ten years a detailed investigation of preheating was performed for chaotic inflation and for hybrid inflation. However, nonperturbative effects during reheating in the new inflation scenario remained practically unexplored.…