Quadratic reheating

TL;DR

This paper investigates the reheating process after inflation, modeling inflaton decay into light bosons using irreversible thermodynamics, and compares linear and quadratic decay models to determine their effects on reheating dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a phenomenological model of reheating using irreversible thermodynamics and analyzes the impact of linear and quadratic decay rates on reheating efficiency.

Findings

Quadratic decay leads to explosive particle and entropy production.

Reheating with quadratic decay reaches maximum temperature faster.

Maximum reheating temperature is comparable to the inflaton mass.

Abstract

The reheating process for the inflationary scenario is investigated phenomenologically. The decay of the oscillating massive inflaton field into light bosons is modeled after an out of equilibrium mixture of interacting fluids within the framework of irreversible thermodynamics. Self-consistent, analytic results for the evolution of the main macroscopic magnitudes like temperature and particle number densities are obtained. The models for linear and quadratic decay rates are investigated in the quasiperfect regime. The linear model is shown to reheat very slowly while the quadratic one is shown to yield explosive particle and entropy production. The maximum reheating temperature is reached much faster and its magnitude is comparable with the inflaton mass.