Backreaction and the parametric resonance of cosmological fluctuations - art. no. 043511

We study the class of two-field inflationary universe models lambda phi (4) /4+g(2)chi (2)phi (2)/2, in which parametric resonance during the initial s tages of reheating can lead to an exponential amplification of the amplitud e of cosmological fluctuations. Employing both analytical arguments and num erical simulations, we determine the time at which the backreaction of fluc tuations on the background fields shuts off the exponential growth, making use of the Hartree approximation and including scalar metric perturbations. For the case g(2)/lambda =2, we find that the amplitude of fluctuations af ter preheating will exceed the observational upper bound independent of the value of lambda, unless the duration of inflation is very long. Cosmologic al fluctuations are acceptably small for g(2)/lambda greater than or equal to8. We also find that the addition of a chi -field self-interaction can li mit the growth of fluctuations, and in the negative coupling case the syste m can become effectively single field, removing the resonance.