
TL;DR
This paper derives the inflaton's equation of motion with one-loop radiative corrections from spectator fields, analyzing particle production during slow roll inflation and challenging the reliability of phenomenological friction models.
Contribution
It provides explicit solutions for the inflaton's evolution including radiative corrections, introduces a generalized optical theorem for cosmology, and develops a non-perturbative mean field theory.
Findings
Inflaton evolution is significantly affected by radiative corrections from spectators.
Total spectator particle number grows exponentially with the number of e-folds.
Phenomenological friction terms are shown to be unreliable for modeling inflaton dynamics.
Abstract
The inflaton equation of motion including one loop radiative corrections from spectator fields is obtained. We consider a massless scalar conformally coupled to gravity and a massless fermion Yukawa coupled to the inflaton as models for spectators that \emph{do not feature} gravitational particle production, their production during slow roll is solely a consequence of their coupling to the inflaton. The one-loop self energy and the fully renormalized equation of motion of the inflaton are obtained and solved explicitly for an inflaton potential . The solution features Sudakov-type logarithmic secular terms, which are resumed via the dynamical renormalization group and compared to the solutions with a phenomenological friction term. During e-folds of slow roll inflation the inflaton evolves as for the…
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