COSMOLOGICAL REHEATING AND SELF-INTERACTING FINAL-STATE BOSONS

We consider inflaton decay to final state bosons with self-interaction s of moderate strength. We find that such final state self-interaction s qualitatively alter the reheat dynamics. In the case of narrow-band resonance decay, where a quantitative analysis is possible, we show th at these final state interactions regulate the decay rate. The phenome non of parametric amplification is then effectively suppressed, and do es not drastically enhance the decay rate and reheat the temperature. Detailed applications of our results to realistic classes of inflation ary models will be considered elsewhere. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevie r Science B.V.