A dynamical inflaton coupled to strongly interacting matter

TL;DR

This paper models the early universe's reheating process by coupling inflationary dynamics with a strongly interacting quantum field theory using holography, revealing a sequence from inflation to thermalized QFT domination.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent holographic framework coupling Einstein-inflaton equations with strongly coupled QFT to study cosmological reheating.

Findings

The coupled system produces an inflating universe transitioning to a reheating phase.

The universe eventually becomes dominated by a thermalized strongly interacting QFT.

The model demonstrates a realistic sequence of early universe evolution stages.

Abstract

According to the inflationary theory of cosmology, most elementary particles in the current universe were created during a period of reheating after inflation. In this work we self-consistently couple the Einstein-inflaton equations to a strongly coupled quantum field theory (QFT) as described by holography. We show that this leads to an inflating universe, a reheating phase and finally a universe dominated by the QFT in thermal equilibrium.