Related papers: From (p)reheating to nucleosynthesis
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.…
For two decades the hot big-bang model has been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not addressed by the standard cosmology and…
Of the light nuclides observed in the universe today, D, 3He, 4He, and 7Li are relics from its early evolution. The primordial abundances of these relics, produced via Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) during the first half hour of the…
Recent studies suggest that the process of symmetry breaking after inflation typically occurs very fast, within a single oscillation of the symmetry-breaking field, due to the spinodal growth of its long-wave modes, otherwise known as…
The formation of structure in the Universe offers some of the most powerful evidence in favour of the existence of dark matter in the Universe. We summarize recent work by ourselves and our collaborators, using linear and quasi-linear…
At the end of inflation the Universe is frozen in a near zero-entropy state with energy density in a coherent scalar field and must be "defrosted" to produce the observed entropy and baryon number. Baryon asymmetry may be generated by the…
We provide a detailed study of reheating in the kination regime where particle content is created by gravitational production of massive scalars mutually interacting with a massless scalar field. The produced particles subsequently decay…
Reheating is a transition era after the end of inflation, during which the inflaton is converted into the particles that populate the Universe at later times. No direct cosmological observables are normally traceable to this period of…
A detailed analysis of primordial nucleosynthesis predictions for light element abundances is performed. Contents: 1. The standard cosmology: an overview. 2. Primordial nucleosynthesis. 3. The Born rates for n<->p reactions. 4. Finite…
We perform calculations of dark photon production and decay in the early universe for ranges of dark photon masses and vacuum coupling with standard model photons. Simultaneously and self-consistently with dark photon production and decay,…
The development of primordial inhomogeneities into the non-linear regime and the formation of the first bound objects mark the transition from a simple cooling universe -- described by just a few parameters -- to a very messy hot one -- the…
We present a review of the main phases of stellar evolution with particular emphasis on the nucleosynthesis and mixing mechanisms in low- and intermediate-mass stars. In addition to explicit studies of the effects of the first, second and…
These lectures have been given to particle physicists, mostly experimentalists and very briefly and at a pedestrian level review the problems of dark matter. The content of the lectures is the following: 1. Introduction. 2. Cosmological…
Within the framework of an eternal inflationary scenario, a natural question regarding the production of eternal bubbles is the essential condition requires to have a universe capable of generating life. In either an open or a closed…
We confront the big bang for the beginning of the universe with an equivalent picture of a slow freeze - a very cold and slowly evolving universe. In the freeze picture the masses of elementary particles increase and the gravitational…
Cosmology and particle physics are deeply interrelated. Among the common problems are dark energy, dark matter and baryon asymmetry of the Universe. We discuss these problems in general terms, and concentrate on several particular…
WThe current status of big bang nucleosynthesis is reviewed with an emphasis on the comparison between the observational determination of the light element abundances of \D, \he3, \he4 and \li7 and the predictions from theory. In…
The primordial nucleosinthesys of the element can be influenced by the transitions of phase that take place after the Big Bang, such as the QCD transition. In order to study the effect of this phase transition, in this work we compute the…
This letter is meant to be a brief survey of several recent publications providing a simple, sequential explanation of Dark Energy, Inflation and Dark Matter, which leads to a simple picture of the why and the how of the Big Bang, and…
An overview of the main phases of the evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars is presented, and the different types of nucleosynthesis operating from the pre-main sequence up to and including the asymptotic giant branch phase…