Quintessential inflation and nonlinear effects of the tachyonic trap mechanism

TL;DR

This paper investigates the tachyonic trapping mechanism in quintessential inflation, analyzing how nonlinear effects and self-interactions influence particle production and the reheating process.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute suppression effects due to self-interactions and explores the parameter space for effective application of the mechanism.

Findings

Self-interactions suppress particle production in the trapping mechanism.

A computational method for suppression magnitude is developed.

Parameter space for effective trapping is identified.

Abstract

With the help of the tachyonic trapping mechanism one can potentially solve a number of problems affecting quintessential inflation models. In this mechanism we introduce a trapping field with a spontaneous symmetry breaking potential. When the quintessential inflaton passes the critical point, a sudden burst of particle production is able to reheat the Universe and trap the inflaton away from theminimum of its potential. However, self-interactions of the trapping field suppress particle production and reduce the efficiency of this process. We develop a method to compute the magnitude of the suppression and explore the parameter space in which the mechanism can be applied effectively.