Quantum theory of fermion production after inflation

Abstract

We show that quantum effects dramatically enhance the production of fermions following preheating after inflation in the early Universe in the presence of high excitations of bosonic quanta. As a consequence fermions rapidly approach a quasistationary distribution with a thermal occupancy in the infrared, while the inflaton enters a turbulent scaling regime. The failure of standard semiclassical descriptions based on the Dirac equation with a homogeneous background field is caused by nonperturbatively high boson occupation numbers. During preheating the inflaton occupation number increases, thus leading to a dynamical mechanism for the enhanced production of fermions from the rescattering of the inflaton quanta. We comment on related phenomena in heavy-ion collisions for the production of quark matter fields from highly occupied gauge bosons.

5 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in PRL with minor changes

References in corpus (6)

• Non-thermal fixed points: effective weak-coupling for strongly correlated systems far from equilibrium
• Chemical thermalization in relativistic heavy ion collisions
• Instability-induced fermion production in quantum field theory
• Low-cost fermions in classical field simulations
• Quantum back-reaction of the superpartners in a large-N supersymmetric hybrid model
• What the inflaton might tell us about RHIC/LHC

Cited by in corpus (56)

• Cosmological Backgrounds of Gravitational Waves
• Universal attractor in a highly occupied non-Abelian plasma
• QCD thermalization: Ab initio approaches and interdisciplinary connections
• Universal self-similar dynamics of relativistic and nonrelativistic field theories near nonthermal fixed points
• Preheating in Palatini Higgs inflation
• Simulating fermion production in 1+1 dimensional QED
• The art of simulating the early Universe -- Part I
• Real-time dynamics of string breaking
• Far-from-equilibrium field theory of many-body quantum spin systems: Prethermalization and relaxation of spin spiral states in three dimensions
• Schwinger pair production with ultracold atoms
• Implementing quantum electrodynamics with ultracold atomic systems
• Gravitational wave production from preheating: parameter dependence
• Basin of attraction for turbulent thermalization and the range of validity of classical-statistical simulations
• Spontaneous B-L Breaking as the Origin of the Hot Early Universe
• Combined Preheating on the lattice with applications to Higgs inflation
• Fermion production from real-time lattice gauge theory in the classical-statistical regime
• Parametric Resonance in the Early Universe - A Fitting Analysis
• Over-populated gauge fields on the lattice
• Universal scaling at non-thermal fixed points of a two-component Bose gas
• Stochastic Background of Gravitational Waves from Fermions -- Theory and Applications
• Chiral instabilities & the onset of chiral turbulence in QED plasmas
• What can the CMB tell about the microphysics of cosmic reheating?
• Fate of $Z_2$ Symmetric Scalar Field
• Out of equilibrium dynamics of coherent non-abelian gauge fields
• Dynamical simulations of electroweak baryogenesis with fermions
• Nonthermal Fixed Points in Quantum Field Theory Beyond the Weak-Coupling Limit
• On finite density effects on cosmic reheating and moduli decay and implications for Dark Matter production
• Early quark production and approach to chemical equilibrium
• On the Role of Quasiparticles and thermal Masses in Nonequilibrium Processes in a Plasma
• Anomaly-induced dynamical refringence in strong-field QED
• Transient anomalous charge production in strong-field QCD
• Measuring the Inflaton Coupling in the CMB
• Universal prethermal dynamics in Heisenberg ferromagnets
• Gravitational wave production from preheating with trilinear interactions
• Schwinger pair production and string breaking in non-Abelian gauge theory from real-time lattice improved Hamiltonians
• Effective Action for Cosmological Scalar Fields at Finite Temperature
• Amplified Fermion Production from Overpopulated Bose Fields
• Nonequilibrium quark production in the expanding QCD plasma
• Chiral Gravitational Waves from Chiral Fermions
• Novel collective excitations in a hot scalar field theory
• Far from equilibrium field theory for strongly coupled light and matter: dynamics of frustrated multi-mode cavity QED
• Thermalization and dynamical spectral properties in the quark-meson model
• Strictly Anomaly Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking
• The B-L Phase Transition: Implications for Cosmology and Neutrinos
• Present and future of CosmoLattice
• Recrudescence of massive fermion production by oscillons
• Seed and vacuum pair production in strong laser field
• Boltzmann equations for preheating
• Fermion condensate from torsion in the reheating era after inflation
• Non-cancellation of the parity anomaly in the strong-field regime of QED${}_{2+1}$
• Consistent cosmology with Higgs thermal inflation in a minimal extension of the MSSM
• Nonequilibrium quark production in the expanding QCD plasma
• Massless quark production in chromoelectric field with back reaction
• AliCPT Sensitivity to Cosmic Reheating
• Misalignment dynamics of Scalar Condensates with Yukawa coupling: Particle and Entropy Production
• Fermion (non)reheating with a quartic inflaton potential