Ricci Reheating on the Lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates the non-linear dynamics of a non-minimally coupled scalar field during a transition from inflation to kination, using lattice simulations to improve understanding of reheating processes in early universe cosmology.

Contribution

It provides a realistic, assumption-free analysis of tachyonic growth and reheating, including gravitational backreaction, which advances previous simplified models.

Findings

Characterized the conditions for successful reheating.

Quantified the effects of gravitational backreaction.

Derived correction factors for analytic scaling relations.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of a non-minimally coupled (NMC) scalar spectator field in non-oscillatory inflationary scenarios, where there is a transition from inflation to kination domination (KD). Engineering a realistic finite-duration transition through a CMB-compatible inflaton potential, we calculate the initial tachyonic growth of the NMC field during KD and perform lattice simulations of the subsequent non-linear dynamics. We characterize the regularization effect on the tachyonic growth, either due to self-interactions, or via gravitational backreaction when the NMC field grows to dominate the energy of the universe. Our study provides the first realistic treatment of the dynamics, with significant improvements compared to previous work, where one or more of the following aspects were assumed: ($i$) the background expansion can be neglected during the tachyonic growth, ($ii$) coherence of the NMC field, ($iii$) coherence of the inflaton, ($iv$) instantaneous transition, and ($v$) a KD equation of state of exactly $w = 1$. Using our methodology, which requires none of the above assumptions, we determine the conditions to achieve proper reheating, i.e. energetic dominance of the NMC field over the inflaton. We characterize the time and energy scales of the problem, either for backreaction due to self-interactions, or (as a novelty of this work) due to gravitational effects. Finally, we calculate $\mathcal{O}(1)$ lattice correction factors to analytic scaling relations derived by some of us in previous work. This enables simple future studies without the need to run lattice simulations.