Speaker
Description
In modern cosmology, it is generally assumed that after inflation, the energy of the inflaton is transferred to radiation through a process known as reheating. Axion-like particles (ALPs) have recently emerged as compelling candidates for the inflaton, primarily because their approximate shift symmetry helps preserve the flatness of the inflationary potential.
This study investigates the reheating process within a model where ALPs are coupled to non-Abelian gauge fields via Chern-Simons interactions. As established in preheating analyses, energy transfer occurs resonantly in this scenario, leading to efficient energy conversion. However, any residual inflaton remaining in the universe could potentially re-dominate the energy density over time.
In this talk, I will present how reheating could be completed in this context and discuss its possible implications for the early universe’s evolution.
