Inflaton Oscillations and Post-Inflationary Reheating
  We analyze in detail the perturbative decay of the inflaton oscillating about
a generic form of its potential $V(\phi) = \phi^k$, taking into account the
effects of non-instantaneous reheating. We show that evolution of the
temperature as a function of the cosmological scale factor depends on the spin
statistics of the final state decay products when $k > 2$. We also include the
inflaton-induced mass of the final states leading to either kinematic
suppression or enhancement if the final states are fermionic or bosonic
respectively. We compute the maximum temperature reached after inflation, the
subsequent evolution of the temperature and the final reheat temperature. We
apply our results to the computation of the dark matter abundance through
thermal scattering during reheating. We also provide an example based on
supersymmetry for the coupling of the inflaton to matter.
