We describe a new efficient mechanism of reheating. Immediately after rolling down the rapidly moving inflaton field $\phi$ produces particles $\chi ,$ which may be either bosons or fermions. This is a nonperturbative process which occurs almost instantly; no oscillations or parametric resonance is required. The effective masses of the $\chi$ particles may be very small at the moment when they are produced, but they “fatten” when the field $\phi$ increases. When the particles $\chi$ become sufficiently heavy, they rapidly decay to other, lighter particles. This leads to an almost instantaneous reheating accompanied by the production of particles with masses which may be as large as ${10}^{17}–{10}^{18}\hspace{0.5em}\mathrm{GeV}.$ This mechanism works in the usual inflationary models where $V\left(\phi \right)$ has a minimum, where it takes only a half of a single oscillation of the inflaton field $\phi ,$ but it is especially efficient in models with effective potentials slowly decreasing at large $\phi$ as in the theory of quintessence.

• Received 14 December 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.59.123523