Preheating and Thermalization after Inflation

Abstract

After a short review of inlationary preheating, we discuss the development of equilibrium in the frameworks of massless $\hat{I}»\hat{I}{¦}^4$ model. It is shown that the process is characterised by the appearance of Kolmogorov spectra and the evolution towards thermal equilibrium follows self-similar dynamics. Simplified kinetic theory gives values for all characteristic exponents which are close to what is observed in lattice simulations. This allows estimation of the resulting reheating temperature.

10 pages, 3 figures; invited talk at the Workshop on Strong and Electroweak Matter (SEWM 2002), October 2-5, 2002, Heidelberg, Germany