When can preheating affect the CMB?

Abstract

We discuss the principles governing the selection of inflationary models for which preheating can affect the CMB. This is a (fairly small) subset of those models which have non-negligible entropy/isocurvature perturbations on large scales during inflation. We study new models which belong to this class - two-field inflation with negative nonminimal coupling and hybrid/double/supernatural inflation models where the tachyonic growth of entropy perturbations can lead to the variation of the curvature perturbation, ${\cal R}$, on super-Hubble scales. Finally we present evidence against recent claims for the variation of ${\cal R}$ in the absence of substantial super-Hubble entropy perturbations.