Reheating in Gauss-Bonnet-coupled inflation

van de Bruck, Carsten and Longden, Chris and Dimopoulos, Konstantinos (2016) Reheating in Gauss-Bonnet-coupled inflation. Physical Review D, 94 (2). ISSN 1550-7998

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Abstract

We investigate the feasibility of models of inflation with a large Gauss-Bonnet coupling at late times, which have been shown to modify and prevent the end of inflation. Despite the potential of Gauss-Bonnet models in predicting favorable power spectra, capable of greatly lowering the tensor-to-scalar ratio compared to now-disfavored models of standard chaotic inflation, it is important to also understand in what context it is possible for postinflationary (p)reheating to proceed and hence recover an acceptable late-time cosmology. We argue that in the previously studied inverse power law coupling case, reheating cannot happen due to a lack of oscillatory solutions for the inflaton, and that neither instant preheating nor gravitational particle production would avoid this problem due to the persistence of the inflaton’s energy density, even if it were to partially decay. Hence we proceed to define a minimal generalization of the model which can permit perturbative reheating and study the consequences of this, including heavily modified dynamics during reheating and predictions of the power spectra.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Physical Review D
Additional Information:
© 2016 American Physical Society - this is author accepted manuscript version of article published in Physical Review D
ID Code:
80775
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
05 Aug 2016 15:36
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
17 Sep 2023 01:54