Current Status of Warm Inflation

TL;DR

Warm inflation is an alternative inflationary model where a thermal bath coexists with the inflaton, allowing different predictions from cold inflation and fitting cosmological data in unique ways.

Contribution

This paper reviews the current status of warm inflation, highlighting its differences from cold inflation and its compatibility with observational data.

Findings

Warm inflation models can be consistent with cosmological observations.

Certain inflation models disallowed in cold inflation are permitted in warm inflation.

Warm inflation offers a viable alternative scenario in early universe cosmology.

Abstract

Warm inflation is an inflationary scenario in which a thermal bath coexists with the inflaton during inflation. This is unlike standard cold inflation in which the Universe is effectively devoid of particles during inflation. The thermal bath in warm inflation is maintained by the dissipation of the inflaton's energy through its couplings to other fields. Many models of warm inflation have been proposed and their predictions have been compared with cosmological data. Certain models of inflation that are disallowed in the context of cold inflation by the data are allowed in the warm inflationary scenario, and vice versa.