We study the role of the Standard Model Higgs condensate, formed during cosmological inflation, in the epoch of reheating that follows. We focus on the scenario where the inflaton decays slowly and perturbatively, so that there is a long period between the end of inflation and the beginning of radiation domination. The Higgs condensate decays nonperturbatively during this period, and we show that it heats the primordial plasma to much higher temperatures than would result from the slowly decaying inflaton alone. We discuss the effect of this hot plasma on the thermalization of the inflaton’s decay products, and study its phenomenological implications for the formation of cosmological relics like dark matter, with associated isocurvature fluctuations, and the restoration of the electroweak and Peccei-Quinn symmetries.

中文翻译：

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使用希格斯凝聚物在再加热过程中达到最高温度

我们研究了在宇宙膨胀期间形成的标准模型希格斯凝聚物在随后的再加热时代中的作用。我们关注暴胀子缓慢而扰动地衰减的情况，因此暴胀结束和辐射统治开始之间有很长一段时间。希格斯凝聚物在此期间无微扰地衰变，我们表明它将原始等离子体加热到比单独缓慢衰变的暴胀子产生的温度高得多的温度。我们讨论了这种热等离子体对暴胀子衰变产物热化的影响，并研究了其对暗物质等宇宙遗迹形成的现象学意义，以及相关的等曲率波动，以及弱电和 Peccei-Quinn 对称性的恢复。