Speaker
Kenneth Marschall
Description
We discuss the energy distribution and equation of state of the universe between the end of inflation and the onset of radiation domination for observationally consistent single-field inflation scenarios, with a potential ’flattening’ at large field values and a monomial shape around the origin. As a proxy for (p)reheating, the inflaton is coupled to a light scalar field with a quadratic interaction and we investigate the non-perturbative and non-linear dynamics of this system with the help of lattice simulations. For particular cases we are able to calculate the exact number of e-folds until radiation domination, which significantly reduces the uncertainty in the inflationary observables, the spectral tilt and tensor-to-scalar ratio.
Primary author
Kenneth Marschall
