The Effect of Nonlinear Gravity on the Cosmological Background During Preheating

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Grutkoski, Ryn, Macpherson, Hayley J., Giblin Jr, John T., Frieman, Joshua
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Grutkoski, Ryn
Macpherson, Hayley J.
Giblin Jr, John T.
Frieman, Joshua
author_facet Grutkoski, Ryn
Macpherson, Hayley J.
Giblin Jr, John T.
Frieman, Joshua
contents We use numerical relativity to study the violent preheating era at the end of inflation. This epoch can result in highly nonlinear fluctuations in density and gravitational potential which feed back onto the averaged expansion rate -- an effect known as backreaction. Usually, simulations of preheating use the Friedmann constraint to enforce the Hubble expansion of spacetime during the evolution. In numerical relativity, this is not required and the inhomogeneous spacetime is evolved self-consistently. For a 'vanilla' preheating model, we find a violation of the Friedmann constraint at the level of $0.005\%$ over the entire simulation. This violation increases to $\sim10\%$ as we sample smaller scales in the simulation domain.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_08939
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Effect of Nonlinear Gravity on the Cosmological Background During Preheating
Grutkoski, Ryn
Macpherson, Hayley J.
Giblin Jr, John T.
Frieman, Joshua
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
We use numerical relativity to study the violent preheating era at the end of inflation. This epoch can result in highly nonlinear fluctuations in density and gravitational potential which feed back onto the averaged expansion rate -- an effect known as backreaction. Usually, simulations of preheating use the Friedmann constraint to enforce the Hubble expansion of spacetime during the evolution. In numerical relativity, this is not required and the inhomogeneous spacetime is evolved self-consistently. For a 'vanilla' preheating model, we find a violation of the Friedmann constraint at the level of $0.005\%$ over the entire simulation. This violation increases to $\sim10\%$ as we sample smaller scales in the simulation domain.
title The Effect of Nonlinear Gravity on the Cosmological Background During Preheating
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.08939