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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Inflation And Preheating In Nonoscillatory Models, Gary Felder, Lev Kofman, Andrei Linde
Inflation And Preheating In Nonoscillatory Models, Gary Felder, Lev Kofman, Andrei Linde
Physics: Faculty Publications
We study inflationary models in which the effective potential of the inflaton field does not have a minimum, but rather gradually decreases at large φ. In such models the inflaton field does not oscillate after inflation, and its effective mass becomes vanishingly small, so the standard theory of reheating based on the decay of the oscillating inflaton field does not apply. For a long time the only mechanism of reheating in such non-oscillatory (NO) models was based on gravitational particle production in an expanding universe. This mechanism is very inefficient. We will show that it may lead to cosmological problems …
Instant Preheating, Gary Felder, Lev Kofman, Andrei Linde
Instant Preheating, Gary Felder, Lev Kofman, Andrei Linde
Physics: Faculty Publications
We describe a new efficient mechanism of reheating. Immediately after rolling down the rapidly moving inflaton field φ produces particles χ, which may be either bosons or fermions. This is a nonperturbative process which occurs almost instantly; no oscillations or parametric resonance is required. The effective masses of the χ particles may be very small at the moment when they are produced, but they “fatten” when the field φ increases. When the particles χ become sufficiently heavy, they rapidly decay to other, lighter particles. This leads to an almost instantaneous reheating accompanied by the production of particles with masses which …