Related papers: Classical decay of inflaton
It is assumed that during inflation, all energy was contained in a slow-rolling inflaton field $\phi$. The particles constituting the Universe are created due to interactions with the field $\phi$ coherently oscillating after inflation. The…
Explosive particle production due to parametric resonance is a crucial feature of reheating in inflationary cosmology. Coherent oscillations of the inflaton field act as a periodically varying mass in the evolution equation for matter…
I describe a recently derived stochastic approach to inflaton dynamics which can address some serious problems associated with conventional inflationary theory. Using this theory I derive an exact solution to the stochastic dynamics for the…
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…
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…
Within the framework of an explicit dynamical model, in which we calculate the radiatively-corrected, tree-level potential that sets up inflation, we show that the inflaton can be a significant part of dark matter today. We exhibit…
For the models of inflation driven by the potential energy of an inflaton field $\phi$, the covariant Galileon Lagrangian $(\partial\phi)^2\Box \phi$ generally works to slow down the evolution of the field. On the other hand, if the…
It is shown that the efficiency of the universe heating by an inflaton field depends not only on the possible presence of parametric resonance in the production of scalar particles but also strongly depends on the character of the inflaton…
We show that the decay of the inflaton field may be incomplete, while nevertheless successfully reheating the universe and leaving a stable remnant that accounts for the present dark matter abundance. We note, in particular, that since the…
We discuss inflaton decays and reheating in no-scale Starobinsky-like models of inflation, calculating the effective equation-of-state parameter, $w$, during the epoch of inflaton decay, the reheating temperature, $T_{\rm reh}$, and the…
We explore the ability of experimental physics to uncover the underlying structure of the gravitational Lagrangian describing inflation. While the observable degeneracy of the inflationary parameter space is large, future measurements of…
We study the classical decay of unstable scalar solitons in noncommutative field theory in 2+1 dimensions. This can, but does not have to, be viewed as a toy model for the decay of D-branes in string theory. In the limit that the…
In order for the inflaton to decay into radiation at the end of inflation, it needs to couple to light matter fields. In this article we determine whether such couplings cause the inflaton to decay during inflation rather than after it. We…
I consider a new semiclassical expansion for the inflaton field in the framework of warm inflation scenario. The fluctuations of the matter field are considered as thermally coupled with the particles of the thermal bath. This coupling…
Recently, Cormier and Holman pointed out that fluctuations of an inflaton field $\phi$ are significantly enhanced in the model of {\it spinodal inflation} with a potential $V(\phi)$ for which the second derivative $V^{(2)}(\phi)$ changes…
Parametric resonance has received a considerable amount of interest as a good mathematical model to describe the initial stages of the reheating phase (matter creation) in inflationary cosmology. It is also known that exponential particle…
We investigate the decay dynamics of oscillons through interactions with an external scalar field. To examine how robust the decay dynamics of oscillons via parametric resonance we previously found in Li et al. 2025 are to the specific form…
In inflationary cosmology, the particles constituting the Universe are created after inflation in the process of reheating due to the interaction with the oscillating inflaton field. We briefly review the basics of the slow reheating, and…
We study preheating after hilltop inflation where the inflaton couples to another scalar field, e.g. a right-handed sneutrino, which provides a mechanism for generating the correct initial conditions for inflation and also a decay channel…
We investigate the possibility of oscillon formation during the preheating phase of asymmetric inflationary potentials. We analytically establish the existence of oscillon-like solutions for the Klein-Gordon equation for a polynomial…