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Alexei Starobinsky investigated how energy stored in an oscillating inflaton can become particles after cosmic inflation. With Lev Kofman and Andrei Linde, he developed a treatment of preheating through parametric resonance in an expanding cosmological background.

Repeated oscillations can amplify a coupled scalar field much more rapidly than independent perturbative decays would suggest. The calculation follows both the growth of the produced particles and their backreaction on the oscillating field. That feedback, together with scattering, changes and eventually terminates the resonance.^[ref]

Andrei Linde develops models of cosmic inflation and the transition to the subsequent hot cosmic state. His work with Lev Kofman and Alexei Starobinsky explained how coherent inflaton oscillations can transfer energy through parametric resonance.

In an expanding background the amplification need not follow the simple periodic pattern of a fixed-frequency oscillator. Their study treated successive production events, backreaction and rescattering, establishing when efficient preheating occurs within the model. Producing particles and reaching thermal equilibrium remain distinct stages.^[ref]

By Lev Kofman, Andrei Linde and Alexei A. Starobinsky. Physical Review D 56, 3258–3295. Primary treatment of resonant particle production with expansion, backreaction and rescattering.