Thermal History of the Universe After Inflation
arXiv:1510.05661 · doi:10.1063/1.4953317
Abstract
When did the universe thermalize? In this talk I review the status of this issue and its importance in establishing the expected properties of dark matter, the growth of large-scale structure, and the viability of inflation models when confronted with CMB observations. I also present a novel approach to tackling the theoretical challenges surrounding inflationary (p)reheating, which seeks to extend past work on the Effective Field Theory of Inflation to the time of reheating.
Invited Plenary Talk at PPC 2015. 6 pages, no figures