  We investigate the effects of bosonic trilinear interactions in preheating
after chaotic inflation. A trilinear interaction term allows for the complete
decay of the massive inflaton particles, which is necessary for the transition
to radiation domination. We found that typically the trilinear term is
subdominant during early stages of preheating, but it actually amplifies
parametric resonance driven by the four-legs interaction. In cases where the
trilinear term does dominate during preheating, the process occurs through
periodic tachyonic amplifications with resonance effects, which is so effective
that preheating completes within a few inflaton oscillations. We develop an
analytic theory of this process, which we call tachyonic resonance. We also
study numerically the influence of trilinear interactions on the dynamics after
preheating. The trilinear term eventually comes to dominate after preheating,
leading to faster rescattering and thermalization than could occur without it.
Finally, we investigate the role of non-renormalizable interaction terms during
preheating. We find that if they are present they generally dominate (while
still in a controllable regime) in chaotic inflation models. Preheating due to
these terms proceeds through a modified form of tachyonic resonance.
