Ricci Reheating

Abstract

We present a model for viable gravitational reheating involving a scalar field directly coupled to the Ricci curvature scalar. Crucial to the model is a period of kination after inflation, which causes the Ricci scalar to change sign thus inducing a tachyonic effective mass $m^2\propto -H^2$ for the scalar field. The resulting tachyonic growth of the scalar field provides the energy for reheating, allowing for temperatures high enough for thermal leptogenesis. Additionally, the required period of kination necessarily leads to a blue-tilted primordial gravitational wave spectrum with the potential to be detected by future experiments. We find that for reheating temperatures $T_{\mathrm{RH}}\lesssim 1$ GeV, the possibility exists for the Higgs field to play the role of the scalar field.

9 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
• Scientific Objectives of Einstein Telescope
• Relating gravitational wave constraints from primordial nucleosynthesis, pulsar timing, laser interferometers, and the CMB: implications for the early universe
• Non-Abelian dynamics in the resonant decay of the Higgs after inflation