Reheating in Inflationary Cosmology: Theory and Applications

TL;DR

This paper reviews the reheating process in inflationary cosmology, emphasizing preheating mechanisms like parametric resonance, and discusses its implications for particle production, thermalization, and cosmological phenomena such as baryogenesis and dark matter.

Contribution

It provides an in-depth review of the preheating stage, highlighting the mechanisms of exponential particle production and their applications in cosmology.

Findings

Detailed discussion of preheating mechanisms like parametric resonance and tachyonic instability.

Overview of thermalization processes following preheating.

Survey of applications to baryogenesis, dark matter, and supersymmetric theories.

Abstract

Reheating is an important part of inflationary cosmology. It describes the production of Standard Matter particles after the phase of accelerated expansion. We give a review of the reheating process, focusing on an in-depth discussion of the preheating stage which is characterized by exponential particle production due to a parametric resonance or tachyonic instability. We give a brief overview of the thermalization process after preheating and end with a survey of some applications to supersymmetric theories and to other issues in cosmology such as baryogenesis, dark matter and metric preheating.