Related papers: Thermalization After Inflation and Reheating Tempe…
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.…
At the end of inflation, dynamical instability can rapidly deposit the energy of homogeneous cold inflaton into excitations of other fields. This process, known as preheating, is rather violent, inhomogeneous and non-linear, and has to be…
We consider a model with nonminimal derivative coupling of inflaton to gravity. The reheating process during rapid oscillation of the inflaton is studied and the reheating temperature is obtained. Behaviors of the inflaton and produced…
We consider the formation of topological defects after inflation. In order to take into account the effects of the rescattering of fluctuations, we integrate the classical equation that describes the evolution of a complex scalar field on…
Plateau inflation is an experimentally consistent framework in which the scale of inflation can be kept relatively low. Close to the edge of the plateau, scalar perturbations are subject to a strong tachyonic instability. Tachyonic…
The reheating process for the inflationary scenario is investigated phenomenologically. The decay of the oscillating massive inflaton field into light bosons is modeled after an out of equilibrium mixture of interacting fluids within the…
We analyze the dynamics of models of warm inflation with general dissipative effects. We consider phenomenological terms both for the inflaton decay rate and for viscous effects within matter. We provide a classification of the asymptotic…
We show that a mini-thermal inflation occurs naturally in a class of gauge mediation models of supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking, provided that the reheating temperature T_R of the primary inflation is much higher than the SUSY-breaking scale,…
Our understanding of the state of the universe between the end of inflation and big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) is incomplete. The dynamics at the end of inflation are rich and a potential source of observational signatures. Reheating, the…
We consider the role of supersymmetric flat directions in reheating the Universe after inflation. One or more flat directions can develop large vevs during inflation, which can potentially affect reheating by slowing down scattering…
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…
Hydrodynamical analysis of experimental data of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions seems to indicate that the hot QCD matter created in the collisions thermalizes very quickly. Theoretically, we have no idea why this should be true. In…
We study the cosmological inflation and reheating in a teleparallel model of gravity. Reheating is assumed to be due to the decay of a scalar field to radiation during its rapid oscillation. By using cosmological perturbations during…
We present a gauge-invariant formalism to study the evolution of the curvature and entropy perturbations in the case in which spatial and time variations of the inflaton decay rate into ordinary matter are present. During the reheating…
We revisit the nonthermal gravitino production at the (p)reheating stage after inflation. Particular attention is paid to large field inflation models with a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry, for which the previous perturbative analysis is…
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…
We calculate the relaxation rate of a scalar field in a plasma of other scalars and fermions with gauge interactions using thermal quantum field theory. It yields the rate of cosmic reheating and thereby determines the temperature of the…
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…
Gravity takes care of both inflation and subsequent reheating in Starobinsky's R^2-model. The latter is due to inflaton gravitation decays dominated by scalar particle production. It is tempting to suggest that dark matter particles are…
When did the universe thermalize? In this talk I review the status of this issue and its importance in establishing the expected properties of dark matter, the growth of large-scale structure, and the viability of inflation models when…