Procacci, Simona (2023). Towards a thermally complete study of inflationary predictions. (Thesis). Universität Bern, Bern

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Abstract

This monograph presents theoretical efforts aiming at precision probes for the model of cosmological inflation. The latter is considered for its virtue of explaining the origin of primordial perturbations. However, the description of the transition from a vacuum- to a radiation-dominated universe is not yet robust. Asking for a realistic framework, we study the effects of including interactions among the inflaton field and a thermal plasma. The concrete setup is the one of [1], where we investigate the dynamics of inflation in the presence of a heat bath. In [3] real-time lattice simulations are used to improve on the estimation of the thermal friction felt by the inflaton field. We compute the contributions to the gravitational wave signal from the warming-up period after inflation [2], and implement thermal corrections to tensor fluctuations produced during inflation [4]. Depending on the maximal temperature reached after inflation, the high-frequency part of [2] can be constrained with Neff, whereas the low-frequency part of [4] may be probed with LISA or ET. To explore these prospects, in [5] we study the dependence of the temperature evolution on the confinement scale of the gauge plasma. The text presented here shows partial overlap with the published material. Nonetheless, the exposition commits to be self-contained, including a pedagogical review of cosmological perturbation theory and inflation, and deriving results through detailed calculations. // List of publications [1] M. Laine and S. Procacci, Minimal warm inflation with complete medium response, JCAP 06 (2021), 031 [2102.09913]. [2] P. Klose, M. Laine and S. Procacci, Gravitational wave background from non-Abelian reheating after axion-like inflation, JCAP 05 (2022), 021 [2201.02317]. [3] M. Laine, L. Niemi, S. Procacci and K. Rummukainen, Shape of the hot topological charge density spectral function, JHEP 11 (2022), 126 [2209.13804]. [4] P. Klose, M. Laine and S. Procacci, Gravitational wave background from vacuum and thermal fluctuations during axion-like inflation, JCAP 12 (2022), 020 [2210.11710]. [5] H. Kolesova, M. Laine and S. Procacci, Maximal temperature of strongly-coupled dark sectors, JHEP 05 (2023), 239 [2303.17973].

Item Type:	Thesis
Dissertation Type:	Single
Date of Defense:	1 September 2023
Subjects:	500 Science > 530 Physics
Institute / Center:	08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Theoretical Physics
Depositing User:	Hammer Igor
Date Deposited:	11 Sep 2023 15:07
Last Modified:	21 Sep 2023 08:06
URI:	https://boristheses.unibe.ch/id/eprint/4522

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