On preheating in $$\alpha $$ α -attractor models of inflation

Abstract We study (p)reheating in $$\alpha $$ α -attractor T-models of inflation, taking into account both scalar fields present in these models: the inflaton and the spectator. The two-field model has a negative field-space curvature which, at the end of inflation, may lead to geometrical destabili...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Tomasz Krajewski, Krzysztof Turzyński, Michał Wieczorek
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2019-08-01
Series:European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields
Online Access:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-7155-z
Description
Summary:Abstract We study (p)reheating in $$\alpha $$ α -attractor T-models of inflation, taking into account both scalar fields present in these models: the inflaton and the spectator. The two-field model has a negative field-space curvature which, at the end of inflation, may lead to geometrical destabilization of the spectator for small values of $$\alpha {\mathop {{}_\sim }\limits ^{<}} 10^{-3}$$ α∼<10-3 . We perform the instability (Floquet) analysis of the linear dynamics and fully non-linear lattice computations with our numerical code, which we specifically designed for a class of two-field models with non-canonical kinetic terms. We find that the perturbations of the spectator field are much more unstable than the perturbations of the inflaton field, so the dynamics of the early stages of preheating is dominated by the evolution of the spectator perturbations. As a result, the transition from the inflationary era to radiation domination era is practically instantaneous and much faster than previously found in an effective theory including only the inflaton field.
ISSN:1434-6044
1434-6052