Magnetohydrodynamics During Reheating

Abstract

Reheating is a crucial phase that connects inflation with the hot Big Bang Universe. During this phase, the nonlinear interactions among the inflaton, the radiation plasma, and the primordial magnetic fields can influence the subsequent evolution of cosmic structures we observe today. In this paper, we develop a multifluid framework to investigate the evolution of three dimensional nonlinear magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) during the non instantaneous reheating phase driven by the perturbative decay of the inflaton into the radiation plasma. For the present paper, we consider the simplest scenario where the inflaton field homogeneously injects energy into the radiation sector. We study the MHD evolution of the coupled inflaton radiation system during the reheating phase, including the evolution of their individual kinetic energies, the velocity perturbations, vorticity, magnetic fields, and gravitational waves. We find that homogeneous energy transfer from the inflaton to the radiation sector increases the radiation and kinetic energy densities but does not significantly amplify the initial magnetic field perturbations. Consequently, the magnetic spectrum remains largely unchanged with respect to the instantaneous reheating scenario, while the velocity perturbations undergo a scale redistribution that affects the resulting GW spectrum. Our results demonstrate the importance of nonlinear multifluid MHD dynamics in understanding the evolution of primordial fields during reheating and provide a framework for exploring more realistic scenarios involving inhomogeneous decay processes and detailed thermalization effects.