  In order for the inflaton to decay into radiation at the end of inflation, it
needs to couple to light matter fields. In this article we determine whether
such couplings cause the inflaton to decay during inflation rather than after
it. We calculate decay amplitudes during inflation, and determine to what
extent such processes have an impact on the mean and variance of the inflaton,
as well as on the expected energy density of its decay products. Although the
exponential growth of the decay amplitudes with the number of e-folds appears
to indicate the rapid decay of the inflaton, cancellations among different
amplitudes and probabilities result in corrections to the different expectation
values that only grow substantially when the number of e-folds is much larger
than the inverse squared inflaton mass in units of the Hubble scale. Otherwise,
for typical parameter choices, it is safe to assume that the inflaton does not
decay during inflation.
