Aspects of reheating in first-order inflation

Technical Report · Sat Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 1991

OSTI ID:5257311

Watkins, R; Widrow, L M

Studied here is reheating in theories where inflation is completed by a first-order phase transition. In the scenarios, the Universe decays from its false vacuum state by bubble nucleation. In the first stage of reheating, vacuum energy is converted into kinetic energy for the bubble walls. To help understand this phase, researchers derive a simple expression for the equation of state of a universe filled with expanding bubbles. Eventually, the bubble walls collide. Researchers present numerical simulations of two-bubble collisions clarifying and extending previous work by Hawking, Moss, and Stewart. The researchers' results indicate that wall energy is efficiently converted into coherent scalar waves. Also discussed is particle production due to quantum effects. These effects lead to the decay of the coherent scalar waves. They also lead to direct particle production during bubble-wall collisions. Researchers calculate particle production for colliding walls in both sine-Gordon and theta (4) theories and show that it is far more efficient in the theta (4) case. The relevance of this work for recently proposed models of first order inflation is discussed.

• Research Organization: Chicago Univ., IL (United States)
• OSTI ID: 5257311
• Report Number(s): N-91-29108; NASA-CR-188705; NAS-1.26:188705; FERMILAB-PUB-91/164-A; CNN: NAGW-1340
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
COSMOLOGY
HEATING
INFLATIONARY UNIVERSE
BUBBLES
EQUATIONS OF STATE
INTERACTIONS
KINETIC ENERGY
NUCLEATION
PARTICLE PRODUCTION
SCALARS
THEORETICAL DATA
COSMOLOGICAL MODELS
DATA
ENERGY
EQUATIONS
INFORMATION
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
NUMERICAL DATA
640106* - Astrophysics & Cosmology- Cosmology