Related papers: Turbulent Thermalization
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…
The mechanism of thermal inflation, a relatively short period of accelerated expansion after primordial inflation, is a desirable ingredient for a certain class of particle physics models if they are not to be in contention with the…
Reheating after inflation occurs due to particle production by the oscillating inflaton field. In this paper we describe the perturbative approach to reheating, and then concentrate on effects beyond the perturbation theory. They are…
In the presence of self-interactions, the post-inflationary evolution of the inflaton field is driven into the non-linear regime by the resonant growth of its fluctuations. The once spatially homogeneous coherent inflaton is converted into…
During (re)heating of the universe after inflation, the relativistic decay products of the inflaton field $\phi$ must lose energy and additional particles must be produced to attain a thermalised state at a temperature $T_{\reh}$. We…
We study the nonlinear stage of preheating in a model consisting of a single inflaton field $\phi$ nonminimally coupled to the spacetime curvature and considering a self-coupling quartic potential V ($\phi$) = $\lambda \phi^4/4$. As the…
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.…
Understanding the realization of thermal equilibrium through the thermalization process in a many-body system is a fundamental and complex scientific question, bridging thermodynamics and classical dynamics and connecting to a host of…
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 present work is the continuation of the investigation of aspects of wave turbulence in preheating we have started in Refs. [1, 2] but considering several classes of inflationary two-fields models. We exhibit the main elements of the…
One of the fundamental problems of modern cosmology is to explain the origin of all the matter and radiation in the Universe today. The inflationary model predicts that the oscillations of the scalar field at the end of inflation will…
We study the out-of-equilibrium nonlinear dynamics of fields after post-inflationary preheating. During preheating, the energy in the homogeneous inflaton is exponentially rapidly transfered into highly occupied out-of-equilibrium…
The reheating stage in post-inflationary cosmologies is reanalyzed. New techniques from non-equilibrium quantum field theory allow a consistent derivation of the equation of motion including the non-linearity of the dynamics. These offer a…
We study, both numerically and analytically, the development of equilibrium after preheating. We show that the process is characterised by the appearance of Kolmogorov spectra and the evolution towards thermal equilibrium follows…
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 discuss the onset of the thermalization process in high-energy heavy-ion collisions from a weak coupling perspective, using classical-statistical real-time lattice simulations as a first principles tool to study the pre-equilibrium…
The transition from the end of inflation to a hot, thermal Universe, commonly referred to as (re)heating, is a critical yet often misunderstood phase in early Universe cosmology. This short review aims to provide a comprehensive,…
At the first stage of reheating after inflation, parametric resonance may rapidly transfer most of the energy of an inflaton field $\phi$ to the energy of other bosons. We show that quantum fluctuations of scalar and vector fields produced…
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 the nonlinear dynamics of inflaton fragmentation during and after preheating in the simplest model of chaotic inflation. While the earlier regime of parametric resonant particle production and the later turbulent regime of…