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Bumpy inflation from explosive particle production

Kaloian D. Lozanov, Xavier Pritchard, Misao Sasaki

astro-ph.COarXiv:2608.26920

Abstract

We present a first-principles derivation of an effective inflaton potential with a bumpy feature. We consider the coupling of a spectator field χto the inflaton ϕsuch that χis massive enough for almost all values of ϕ, but becomes massless when the inflaton crossed the value ϕ. This gives rise to a burst of χ-particle production at ϕ=ϕ. By taking the backreaction of the particle production, we obtain a bumpy feature in the effective potential.

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