Related papers: Non-Thermal Phase Transitions after Inflation
In supersymmetric extensions of the particle physics Standard Model, gauge invariant combinations of squarks and sleptons (flat directions) can acquire large expectation values during a period of cosmological inflation. If the inflaton…
Cosmic inflation provides a compelling framework for explaining several observed features of our Universe, but its viability depends on an efficient reheating phase that converts the inflaton's energy into Standard Model particles. This…
With the growing consensus on simple power law inflation models not being favored by the PLANCK observation, dynamics for the non-standard form of the inflaton potential gain significant interest in the recent past. In this paper, we…
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…
In first-order inflation a phase transition is completed by the collisions of expanding true-vacuum bubbles. If bubble collisions produce large numbers of soft scalar particles carrying quantum numbers associated with a spontaneously broken…
A scalar Higgs field can be repeatedly switched on and off when it couples to a classically oscillating scalar modulus field. The modulus flips the Higgs mass term between stable and tachyonic values. We study a cosmological scenario in…
We study the parametric amplification of super-Hubble-scale scalar metric fluctuations at the end of inflation in some specific two-field models of inflation, a class of which is motivated by hybrid inflation. We demonstrate that there can…
We investigate the production of gravitational waves during preheating after inflation in the common case of field potentials that are asymmetric around the minimum. In particular, we study the impact of oscillons, comparatively long lived…
We discuss two important modifications of inflationary paradigm. Until very recently we believed that inflation automatically leads to flatness of the universe, Omega = 1. We also thought that post-inflationary phase transitions in GUTs may…
We point out that inflaton decay products acquire plasma masses during the reheating phase following inflation. The plasma masses may render inflaton decay kinematicaly forbidden, causing the temperature to remain frozen for a period at a…
We present two- and three-dimensional simulations of the growth of quantum fluctuations of the scalar fields in supersymmetric hybrid inflation models. For a natural range of couplings, sub-horizon quantum fluctuations undergo rapid growth…
In certain models of inflation, the postinflationary reheating of the Universe is not primarily due to perturbative decay of the inflaton field into particles, but proceeds through a tachyonic instability. In the process, long-wavelength…
It has recently been proposed that the production of long wavelength Higgs and gauge configurations via parametric resonance at the end of inflation may give rise to the required baryon asymmetry at the electroweak scale. We show that the…
Topical phenomena in high-energy physics related to collision experiments of heavy nuclei ("Little Bang") and early universe cosmology ("Big Bang") involve far-from-equilibrium dynamics described by quantum field theory. One example…
Quantum gravitational back-reaction offers the potential of simultaneously resolving the problem of the cosmological constant and providing a natural model of inflation in which scalars play no special role. In this model inflation begins…
Axion inflation entails a coupling of the inflaton field to gauge fields through the Chern-Simons term. This results in a strong gauge field production during inflation, which backreacts on the inflaton equation of motion. Here we show that…
We show that models of inflection point inflation exhibit a phase transition from a region in parameter space where they are of large field type to a region where they are of small field type. The phase transition is between a universal…
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…
We study reheating in some one and two field realizations of {\it Fibre Inflation}. We find that reheating begins with a phase of preheating in which long wavelength fluctuation modes are excited. In two field models there is a danger that…
We consider preheating in models in which the potential for the inflaton is given by a fractional power, as is the case in axion monodromy inflation. We assume a standard coupling between the inflaton field and a scalar matter field. We…