Nonlinear dynamics of fermions during preheating Original Research Article

We study the role of dynamical fermions during preheating after inflation. We compute the nonequilibrium dynamics of Dirac fermions coupled to a scalar (inflaton) field at next-to-next-to-leading order in a coupling expansion of the 2PI effective action. Besides the well-known parametric production of bosons and fermions and their back-reaction on the background inflaton field, this includes direct interactions between produced particles, which have been neglected in previous studies. We present preliminary numerical results in 3+1 dimensions which indicates that, for intermediate Yukawa couplings, the latter can dramatically affect the usual picture of preheating.