2007/05/23 by Konstantinos Dimopoulos · 4 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #astro-ph #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.76.063506
published as Phys.Rev.D76:063506,2007 · 16 pages, 1 figure, RevTeX
arxiv created 2007/05/23 · openalex publication_date 2007/09/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is investigated whether a massive Abelian vector field, whose gauge kinetic function is growing during inflation, can be responsible for the generation of the curvature perturbation in the Universe. Particle production is studied and it is shown that the vector field can obtain a scale-invariant superhorizon spectrum of perturbations with a reasonable choice of kinetic function. After inflation the vector field begins coherent oscillations, during which it corresponds to pressureless isotropic matter. When the vector field dominates the Universe, its perturbations give rise to the observed curvature perturbation following the curvaton scenario. It is found that this is possible if, after the end of inflation, the mass of the vector field increases at a phase transition at temperature of order 1 TeV or lower. Inhomogeneous reheating, whereby the vector field modulates the decay rate of the inflaton, is also studied.