From heaviness to lightness during inflation

Abstract

We study the quantum fluctuations of scalar fields with a variable effective mass during an inflationary phase. We consider the situation where the effective mass depends on a background scalar field, which evolves during inflation from being frozen into a damped oscillatory phase when the Hubble parameter decreases below its mass. We find power spectra with suppressed amplitude on large scales, similar to the standard massless spectrum on small scales, and affected by modulations on intermediate scales. We stress the analogies and differences with the parametric resonance in the preheating scenario. We also discuss some potentially observable consequences when the scalar field behaves like a curvaton.