Evolution of cosmological perturbations during reheating

Abstract

The behavior of scalar perturbations on superhorizon scales during the reheating stage is investigated by replacing the rapidly oscillating inflaton field by a perfect fluid obtained by the spacetime averaging and the WKB approximation. The influence of the energy transfer from the inflaton to radiation on the evolution of the Bardeen parameter is examined for realistic reheating processes. It is shown that the entropy perturbation generated by the energy transfer is negligibly small, and therefore the Bardeen parameter is conserved with good accuracy during reheating. This justifies the conventional prescription relating the amplitudes of quantum fluctuations during inflation and those of adiabatic perturbations at horizon crossing in the post-Friedmann stage.