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Late reheating, hadronic jets, and baryogenesis.
Takehiko Asaka1, Dmitri Grigoriev, Vadim Kuzmin
1Institute of Theoretical Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Physical Review Letters
|April 20, 2004
Summary
Late universe reheating can be nonuniform, creating hot plasma lumps from inflaton decays. These lumps may trigger electroweak baryogenesis, generating baryon asymmetry at low temperatures.
Area of Science:
- Cosmology
- Particle Physics
- Quantum Field Theory
Background:
- The reheating temperature of the Universe can be lower than the electroweak scale if the inflaton couples weakly to ordinary matter.
- Understanding the mechanisms of baryogenesis is crucial for explaining the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the nature of late reheating in the Universe.
- To explore the possibility of electroweak baryogenesis at low reheating temperatures.
Main Methods:
- Simulating the late reheating process after inflaton decay.
- Analyzing the formation of hot plasma lumps within particle jets.
- Investigating the conditions for unsuppressed sphaleron processes.
Main Results:
- Late reheating occurs nonuniformly within narrow jets from inflaton decay products.
- Hot plasma lumps can reach temperatures sufficient for unsuppressed sphaleron processes.
- Electroweak baryogenesis is possible at reheating temperatures as low as approximately 10 GeV.
Conclusions:
- The observed baryon asymmetry may originate from local electroweak baryogenesis during late, nonuniform reheating.
- Inflaton properties (mass and decay constant) influence the efficiency of this baryogenesis mechanism.