APEC Seminar (Astronomy - Particle Physics - Experimental Physics - Cosmology)

Speaker: Kyohei Mukaida (Kavli IPMU)
Title: Thermalization after Inflation
Date (JST): Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 13:30 - 14:30
Place: Seminar Room A
Related File: 1484.pdf
Abstract: After inflation, inflaton converts its huge energy into radiation to create the hot Universe, which is referred to as reheating. Naively, one might guess that radiation produced via reheating soon attains the thermal distribution within the Hubble time. Under this instantaneous thermalization assumption, attractive thermal mechanisms were proposed so far to solve cosmological problems; such as thermal leptogenesis, thermal dark matter production and so on. In this talk, we examine this naive expectation, i.e. instantaneous thermalization, in the case of reheating via perturbative inflaton decay. We will show how the produced plasma becomes thermalized, and also discuss its implications on heavy particle production and symmetry restoration in the early Universe.