Dissipative Effects on Reheating after Inflation

Abstract

The inflaton must convert its energy into radiation after inflation, which, in a conventional scenario, is caused by the perturbative inflaton decay. This reheating process would be much more complicated in some cases: the decay products obtain masses from an oscillating inflaton and thermal environment, and hence the conventional reheating scenario can be modified. We study in detail processes of particle production from the inflaton, their subsequent thermalization and evolution of inflaton/plasma system by taking dissipation of the inflaton in a hot plasma into account. It is shown that the reheating temperature is significantly affected by these effects.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures; v2: minor changes to reflect the published versio