Related papers: Probing Bose-enhanced Inflaton Decay with Gravitat…
Motivated by recent experiments we study the interconversion between ultracold atomic and molecular condensates, quantifying the resulting oscillations and their slow decay. We find that near equilibrium the dominant damping source is the…
In many models of inflation, the period of accelerated expansion ends with preheating, a highly non-thermal phase of evolution during which the inflaton pumps energy into a specific set of momentum modes of field(s) to which it is coupled.…
Gravitational waves have become an irreplaceable tool for exploring the post-inflationary universe. Their cosmological and astrophysical origins have been attracting numerous attention. In this Letter, we point out a novel source of…
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…
We study the decay of scalar fields, in particular the inflaton, into lighter scalars in a De Sitter spacetime background. After providing a practical definition of the rate, we focus on the case of an inflaton interacting with a massless…
The coupling between a pseudo-scalar inflaton and a gauge field leads to an amount of additional density perturbations and gravitational waves (GWs) that is strongly sensitive to the inflaton speed. This naturally results in enhanced GWs at…
We study the dynamics of a supersonically expanding ring-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate both experimentally and theoretically. The expansion redshifts long-wavelength excitations, as in an expanding universe. After expansion, energy in the…
We explore various aspects concerning the role of vector bosons during the reheating process. Generally, reheating occurs during the period of oscillations of the inflaton condensate and the evolution of the radiation bath depends on the…
Inspired by recent proposals for detecting gravitational waves by using Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), we investigate the interplay between these two phenomena. A gravitational wave induces a phase shift in the fidelity amplitude of the…
Phonons in expanding Bose-Einstein condensates with wavelengths much larger than the healing length behave in the same way as quantum fields within a universe undergoing an accelerated expansion. This analogy facilitates the application of…
The process of reheating the universe after hybrid inflation is extremely violent. It proceeds through the nucleation and subsequent collision of large concentrations of energy density in bubble-like structures, which generate a significant…
It was recently shown that gravitons with a very small mass should have formed a Bose-Einstein condensate in the very early Universe, whose density and quantum potential can account for the dark matter and dark energy in the Universe…
The detection of primordial gravitational waves would offer a direct evidence of inflation and valuable insights into the dynamics of the early universe. During post-inflation reheating period, when the inflaton coherently oscillates at the…
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…
The curvaton and the inhomogeneous reheating scenarios for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represent an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario where the observed density perturbations are…
The realization of Bose-Einstein condensation in ultracold trapped gases has led to a revival of interest in that fascinating quantum phenomenon. This experimental achievement necessitated both extremely low temperatures and sufficiently…
We investigate a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) as a gravitational wave detector, and study its sensitivity by optimizing the properties of the condensate and the measurement duration. We show that detecting kilohertz gravitational waves is…
Cosmological reheating bridges the inflationary epoch and the hot big bang phase, yet its underlying dynamics remain poorly understood. In this work, we investigate a minimal scenario in which the inflaton evolves under a simple power-law…
We describe the challenges and pathways when probing inflaton as dark matter with the stochastic gravitational waves (GWs) signal generated during the (p)reheating. Such scenarios are of utmost interest when no other interaction between the…
Reheating after inflation can occur through inflaton decay or efficient parametric resonant production of particles from the oscillation of the inflaton. If the particles produced interact with scalars that were light during inflation, then…