Kinematics of perturbative cosmic reheating

by Dr Marco Drewes

Wednesday 6 Mar 2013, 17:15 → 18:15 Europe/Berlin

3344 TUM Physik (Universe)

We calculate the relaxation rate of a scalar field in a plasma of
fermions with gauge interactions and other scalars in thermal quantum
field theory. It yields the rate of cosmic reheating and thereby
determines the temperature of the ``hot big bang'' in inflationary
cosmology. We in particular study the effect of finite temperature
corrections to quasiparticle dispersion relations on the efficiency of
reheating.