Gravitational wave signals and cosmological consequences of gravitational reheating

Abstract

Reheating after inflation can proceed even if the inflaton couples to Standard Model (SM) particles only gravitationally. However, particle production during the transition between de-Sitter expansion and a decelerating Universe is rather inefficient and the necessity to recover the visible Universe leads to a non-standard cosmological evolution initially dominated by remnants of the inflaton field. We remain agnostic to the specific dynamics of the inflaton field and discuss a generic scenario in which its remnants behave as a perfect fluid with a general barotropic parameter $w$. Using CMB and BBN constraints we derive the allowed range of inflationary scales. We also show that this scenario results in a characteristic primordial Gravitational Wave (GW) spectrum which gives hope for observation in upcoming runs of LIGO as well as in other planned experiments.

17 pages, 6 figures

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• Gravitational waves from global cosmic strings in quintessential inflation
• Inconsistency of an inflationary sector coupled only to Einstein gravity
• Exploring the Spectral Shape of Gravitational Waves Induced by Primordial Scalar Perturbations and Connection with the Primordial Black Hole Scenarios
• On Inflationary Scale, Reheating Scale and Pre-BBN Cosmology with Scalar Fields
• Measuring Inflaton Couplings via Primordial Gravitational Waves
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• Reheating through the Higgs amplified by spinodal instabilities and gravitational creation of gravitons
• Gravitational reheating and superheavy Dark Matter creation after inflation with non-minimal coupling
• Baryogenesis in the paradigm of quintessential inflation
• Emergent dark energy from unparticles
• Observable Gravitational Waves from Hyperkination in Palatini Gravity and Beyond
• CMB signature of non-thermal Dark Matter produced from self-interacting dark sector
• Observable Primordial Gravitational Waves from Non-minimally Coupled $R^2$ Palatini Modified Gravity
• Curved spacetime effective field theory (cEFT) -- construction with the heat kernel method
• Primordial Gravitational Waves as Probe of Dark Matter in Interferometer Missions: Fisher Forecast and MCMC
• Constraining the history of reheating with the NANOGrav 15-year data
• Canonical Scalar Field Inflation with a Woods-Saxon Potential
• A universal bound on the duration of a kination era
• More on Emergent Dark Energy from Unparticles
• Inflation in supergravity from field redefinitions
• Gravitational waves from a curvature-induced phase transition of a Higgs-portal dark matter sector
• Hill-climbing dark inflation
• Kination cosmology from scalar fields and gravitational-wave signatures