Observable Signatures of Inflaton Decays

Understand

We numerically compute features in the power-spectrum that originate from the decay of fields during inflation.

• Using a simple, phenomenological, multi-field setup, we increase the number of fields from a few to thousands.
• Whenever a field decays, its associated potential energy is transferred into radiation, causing a jump in the equation of state parameter and mode mixing at the perturbed level.
• We observe discrete steps in the power-spectrum if the number of fields is low, in agreement with analytic arguments in the literature.