June 10, 14:15 in A315 (Friday Seminar)   

Chris Byrnes (Bielefeld U., Germany)


 

Beauty is distractive: Particle production during multifield inflation

While there have been many investigations about the effect of particle production at the end of inflation (i.e. preheating) or while observable modes cross the horizon, there is a long period between these two events. I will demonstrate the effects of a brief period of particle production which occurs after the observable cosmological scales have exited the Hubble radius. In multiple-field inflation this may lead to observable signatures in the CMB and large scale structure, because the back reaction of the particle production onto the inflaton(s) will depend on the inflationary trajectory (and hence on the position in the universe). In particular non-Gaussianity of the curvature perturbation places interesting constraints on such a scenario.