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arXiv · hep-ph/9610400

Lattice study of classical inflaton decay

Abstract

We study numerically the decay of the inflaton by solving the full non-linear equations of motion on the lattice. We confirm that parametric resonance is effective in transferring energy from the inflaton to a scalar field as long as the self-interactions of the second field are very small. However, in the very broad resonance case (q>>1) the decay rate is limited by scatterings, which significantly slows down the decay. We also find that the inflaton cannot decay via parametric resonance into a scalar field with moderate self-interactions. This means that the preheating stage may be completely absent in many natural inflationary models.

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BibTeXRIS

Tomislav Prokopec, Thomas G. Roos. 1997-08-28. Lattice study of classical inflaton decay. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.55.3768

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