The role of vectors in reheating

Abstract

We explore various aspects concerning the role of vector bosons during the reheating process. Generally, reheating occurs during the period of oscillations of the inflaton condensate and the evolution of the radiation bath depends on the inflaton equation of state. For oscillations about a quadratic minimum, the equation of state parameter, w = p/ρ = 0, and the evolution of the temperature, T(a) with respect to the scale factor is independent of the spin of the inflaton decay products. However, for cases when w > 0, there is a dependence on the spin, and here we consider the evolution when the inflaton decays or scatters to vector bosons. We also investigate the gravitational production of vector bosons as potential dark matter candidates. Gravitational production predominantly occurs through the longitudinal mode. We compare these results to the gravitational production of scalars.