PREHEATING AND PHASE TRANSITIONS IN GAUGE THEORIES

It has recently been suggested that the baryon washout problem of the standard electroweak baryogenesis scenario could be avoided if inflation ends with a period of parametric resonance at a low enough energy density. I present results of numerical simulations in which this process was studied in the Abelian Higgs model. Our results show that because of the masslessness of the gauge field, the parametric resonance takes place naturally, and that the system reaches a quasi-equilibrium state in which the long-wavelength part of the spectrum has a high effective temperature. This enhances baryon number violation and makes baryogenesis more efficient.