Post-inflationary reheating and perturbations of the cosmic microwave background

Abstract

We formulate a gradual dynamical transition from a power-law inflation era with a scalar field to a radiation era with no scalar field including inhomogeneous perturbations to the Friedmann- Robertson-Walker universe. We show that for the cosmic microwave background radiation fluctuations this is excellently approximated by a sudden transition, with application of the Lichnerowicz conditions, both for density and gravitational wave perturbations.