Application of the Separate Universe Approach to Preheating

Abstract

The dynamics of preheating after inflation has not been clearly understood yet.In particular, the issue of the generation of metric perturbations during preheating on super-horizon scale is still unsettled. Large scale perturbations may leave an imprint on the cosmic microwave background, or may become seeds for generation of primordial black holes. Hence, in order to make a connection between the particle physics models and cosmological observations, understanding the evolution of super-Hubble scale perturbations during preheating is important. Here, we propose an alternative treatment to handle this issue based on the so-called separate universe approach, which suggests less efficient amplification of super-Hubble modes during preheating than was expected before. We also point out an important issue which may have been overlooked in previous treatments.