Reheating

Reheating transfers the inflaton energy into other particles after cosmic inflation, eventually establishing a hot thermal bath. It requires interactions in addition to a background scalar potential. The duration and averaged equation-of-state parameter of reheating affect the number of e-folds between a chosen scale's horizon exit and the end of inflation.

Nonperturbative particle production after cosmic inflation, for example by parametric resonance caused by an oscillating inflaton. Large occupation numbers can grow before a thermal bath exists. Backreaction, rescattering and subsequent thermalization affect the outcome, so an effective perturbative decay rate need not describe every stage.^[ref]

A coarse-grained description in which quadratic inflaton oscillations have zero mean pressure and lose energy at constant effective decay rate $\Gamma$ to a relativistic component. Adding the equations preserves total energy accounting with the appropriate expansion work. Efficient transfer occurs around $H\sim \Gamma$, but producing particles and achieving thermal equilibrium are different steps. The potential alone does not specify the decay rate or thermalization interactions.

The reheating temperature characterizes the thermal radiation bath after energy from a nonthermal component has been transferred and thermalized. For sudden decay of a dominant nonrelativistic relic, $T_R\simeq [3M_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2{\Gamma }^2/(c_2{g}_{\star }){]}^{1/4}$. It differs from the residual radiation temperature immediately before decay.

For a quartic inflaton potential, an endpoint field of order the unreduced Planck mass leaves density of order $\lambda M_P^4$. If prompt, efficient reheating converts it to equilibrium radiation, $\rho =({\pi }^2/30)g_{\ast }{T}_R^4$ gives the displayed scaling. With the potential-only endpoint estimate ${\varphi }_e=M_P/\sqrt{\pi }$, the coefficient is $[15/(2{\pi }^4){]}^{1/4}$. End-of-inflation kinetic energy changes that coefficient by order one, and delayed transfer or incomplete thermalization requires a reheating model rather than the potential alone.

The sudden-decay approximation converts a dominant cold relic's rest-mass density into radiation at $H\simeq \Gamma$, neglecting expansion during the conversion. Its pre-decay radiation temperature obeys $T_{-}^3\simeq 3M_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2{\Gamma }^2/(c_1{g}_{\star }Ym)$, while the reheating temperature is set by the post-decay radiation energy density. Constant relativistic counts and prompt thermalization are additional assumptions.

At fixed scale factor and unchanged relativistic counts, instantaneous conversion of a relic into thermal radiation gives the displayed entropy-density enhancement. It exceeds one because the gas receives energy from outside its prior equilibrium sector. This does not contradict cosmological entropy conservation, whose source-free reversible assumptions fail during decay and thermalization.