  We note some close parallels between preheating/perturbative reheating,
(p)reheating, models in post-inflationary cosmology and the dynamical Casimir
effect (DCE) in quantum optics. For the plasma-mirror model we show how the
effective plasma mass (arising from conduction electrons) behaves like an
oscillating inflaton field, while created photons behave like a scalar field
coupled quadratically to the inflaton. Furthermore, the effect of spacetime
expansion can also be incorporated by varying the dielectric function. We
propose an experiment that could mimic (p)reheating for both narrow and broad
parametric resonance, by employing technology already being used in attempts to
detect DCE photons via plasma-mirrors.
