Physics – Nuclear Physics
Scientific paper
Apr 1992
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992nuphb.374..446w&link_type=abstract
Nuclear Physics B, Volume 374, Issue 2, p. 446-468.
Physics
Nuclear Physics
14
Scientific paper
We study reheating in theories where inflation is completed by a first-order phase transition. In these scenarios, the Universe decays from its false vacuum state by bubble nucleation. We follow the Universe through the phase transition beginning with bubble nucleation and ending with particle production from wall collisions. In the first stage of reheating, vacuum energy is converted into kinetic energy for the bubble walls. To help understand this phase we derive a simple expression for the equation of state of a universe filled with expanding bubbles. Eventually the bubble walls collide. The production of particles during wall collisions from both classical and quantum processes is examined. We study classical scalar wave production through numerical simulations of two-bubble collisions, clarifying and extending previous work by Hawking, Moss and Stewart. We go on to discuss direct quantum particle production due to couplings between the inflaton and other fields. We calculate particle production for colliding walls in both sine-Gordon and φ4 theories. Our results indicate that both classical and quantum processes are quite efficient for models with double-well potentials, but can be suppressed for models with potentials that are periodic. In addition, we show that particles with masses well above the mass of the inflaton can be produced if the walls are highly relativistic. The relevance of our work for recently proposed models of first-order inflation is discussed.
Watkins Richard
Widrow Lawrence M.
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