Is warm inflation quasi-stable?

Abstract

The present work deals with a non-equilibrium thermodynamics that is associated with the scenario of warm inflation. The premise is that an adiabatic radiation production process holds exactly i.e. the radiation dilution is exactly counterbalanced by a dissipation term. Under this hypothesis, it is found that radiation particle number, temperature, radiation energy density and pressure are all conserved -- a contradiction to the very nature of the warm inflation dynamics. However, such exact adiabatic radiation production process never happens in any realistic analysis of warm inflation. In the slow roll approximation this holds at best at the zeroth order. Finally it is shown that a variable cosmological constant may accommodate the quasi-stable process in warm inflation with non-equilibrium thermodynamic description.