Irreversible thermodynamical description of warm inflationary cosmological models

Abstract: We investigate the interaction between scalar fields and radiation in the framework of warm inflationary models by using the irreversible thermodynamics of open systems with matter creation/annihilation. We consider the scalar fields and radiation as an interacting two component cosmological fluid in a homogeneous, spatially flat and isotropic Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) Universe. The thermodynamics of open systems as applied together with the gravitational field equations to the two component cosmological fluid leads to a generalization of the elementary scalar field-radiation interaction model, which is the theoretical basis of warm inflationary models, with the decay (creation) pressures explicitly considered as parts of the cosmological fluid energy-momentum tensor. Specific models describing coherently oscillating scalar waves, scalar fields with a constant potential, and scalar fields with a Higgs type potential are considered in detail. For each case exact and numerical solutions of the gravitational field equations with scalar field-radiation interaction are obtained, and they show the transition from an accelerating inflationary phase to a decelerating one. The theoretical predictions of the warm inflationary scenario with irreversible matter creation are also compared in detail with the Planck 2018 observational data, and constraints on the free parameters of the model are obtained.