Reheating and Leptogenesis after Vector inflation

Abstract

We study the reheating and non-thermal leptogenesis in the case of a vector inflaton. We concentrate on particle production during the phase of oscillating background, especially gravitational production induced by the presence of non-minimal coupling imposed by an isotropic and homogeneous Universe. Including processes involving the exchange of graviton, we then extend our study to decay into fermions via direct or anomalous couplings. The necessity of non-minimal gravitational coupling and the gauge nature of couplings to fermions implies a much richer phenomenology than for a scalar inflaton.

Comments: 29 pages, 4 figures, 15 tikzpicture Feynman diagrams, 2 tables. v3: Matches version published in JCAP. Modifications in section 4.2 on non-thermal leptogenesis, corrected figures, added comments in section 3.3 on radiative corrections and UV completion