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arXiv · 2301.09456

Hot Big Bang from inflation without the inflaton reheating

Alex Buchel
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Abstract

According to the standard lore, a prolonged inflation leaves a quantum field theory in a cold, low entropy state. Thus, some mechanism is needed to reheat this post-inflationary state, leaving a hot, thermal, radiation-dominated Universe. Typically, reheating is achieved coupling the inflaton field to the QFT degrees of freedom. We argue that the nonequilibrium dynamics of a non-conformal QFT in (post-)inflationary background space-time can produce hot quark-gluon plasma with the reheating temperature of order the inflationary Hubble scale, without the inflaton coupling.

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Alex Buchel. 2023-01-23. Hot Big Bang from inflation without the inflaton reheating. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2023.137883

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