Perturbative Reheating in the Mixed Higgs-$R^2$ Model

Abstract: The preheating process in the mixed Higgs-$ R^2 $ model has been investigated in depth recently, but the analysis of perturbative reheating is still missing. In this paper, we discuss the effect of perturbative decay during (p)reheating in this model. It is shown that perturbative decay can play an important role throughout the whole reheating process. Depending on the model parameters, perturbative decay can affect different stages of the reheating. We study the perturbative reheating with and without the presence of early preheating stage, and calculate the reheating temperature and the duration of the whole perturbative process. We find that the detail of the early preheating stage may not affect the final reheating temperature while it can affect the number of e-folds of reheating.