Event Details

Thermalization during Preheating

The preheating phase of the early universe, in which particle production occurs through parametric excitation of fields coupled to the inflaton condensate, is an area that has attracted much interest in research. This complex stage of non-perturbative, resonant particle production, results in a highly non-thermal spectrum for the associated number density. As a result the system must necessarily thermalize if it is to enter the hot big-bang (HBB) phase. In this talk I will present a novel approach to preheating theory, with the aim of treating the effects of thermalization consistently from the onset of preheating, and in doing so, constructing a set of self-consistent Boltzmann transport equations describing the evolutions of the number density and pair correlations. Upon a numerical analysis of these equations, some interesting, non-trivial results arise.