Reheating in Gauss-Bonnet-coupled inflation
  We investigate the feasibility of models of inflation with a large
Gauss-Bonnet coupling at late times, which have been shown to modify and
prevent the end of inflation. Despite the potential of Gauss-Bonnet models in
predicting favourable power spectra, capable of greatly lowering the
tensor-to-scalar-ratio compared to now-disfavoured models of standard chaotic
inflation, it is important to also understand in what context it is possible
for post-inflationary (p)reheating to proceed and hence recover an acceptable
late-time cosmology. We argue that in the previously-studied inverse power law
coupling case, reheating cannot happen due to a lack of oscillatory solutions
for the inflaton, and that neither instant preheating nor gravitational
particle production would avoid this problem due to the persistence of the
inflaton's energy density, even if it were to partially decay. Hence we proceed
to define a minimal generalisation of the model which can permit perturbative
reheating and study the consequences of this, including heavily modified
dynamics during reheating and predictions of the power spectra.
