Speaker
Description
The out-of-equilibrium evolution of the early universe plays a central role in addressing some of the most pressing outstanding puzzles of particle physics, such as the matter-antimatter asymmetry and the production of dark matter. A consistent description of the non-equilibrium dynamics of the system requires systematically incorporating quantum and thermal effects, which can be achieved via the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism together with the two-particle-irreducible (2PI) effective action.
In this talk, I show how this first-principles approach can be used to study particle production during non-equilibrium stages of the early-universe evolution. In particular, I demonstrate how the same framework captures both perturbative particle production, governed by scattering processes, and non-perturbative production arising from non-adiabatic, coherent dynamics. I illustrate this in two phenomenologically relevant settings: the real-time dynamics of bubbles in first-order phase transitions, and the preheating epoch following inflation.