Inflationary Reheating and Fermions

TL;DR

This paper explores how fermions are produced during the reheating phase after inflation, highlighting differences from bosonic preheating and potential applications like energy transfer and super-massive fermion creation.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of fermion production mechanisms after inflation, emphasizing non-perturbative effects and implications for cosmology.

Findings

Fermion production is limited by Pauli-blocking, preventing exponential growth.

Fermionic preheating can efficiently transfer inflaton energy.

Super-massive fermions can be generated during fermionic preheating.

Abstract

Coherent oscillations of the inflaton field at the end of inflation can parametrically excite fermions in much the same way that bosons are created in preheating. Although Pauli-blocking prohibits the occupation number of created fermions from growing exponentially, fermion production occurs in a manner significantly different from the expectations of simple perturbation theory. Here, I discuss the nature of fermion production after inflation and possible applications including the efficient transfer of inflaton energy and the production of super-massive fermions during fermionic preheating.