  Warm inflation scenarios are studied with the dissipative coefficient
computed in the equilibrium approximation. Use is made of the analytical
expressions available in the low temperature regime with focus on the
possibility of achieving strong dissipation within this approximation. Two
different types of models are examined: monomial or equivalently chaotic type
potentials, and hybrid like models where the energy density during inflation is
dominated by the false vacuum. In both cases dissipation is shown to typically
increase during inflation and bring the system into the strong dissipative
regime. Observational consequences are explored for the amplitude of the
primordial spectrum and the spectral index, which translate into constraints on
the number of fields mediating the dissipative mechanism, and the number of
light degrees of freedom produced during inflation. This paper furthers the
foundational development of warm inflation dynamics from first principles
quantum field theory by calculating conservative lower bound estimates on
dissipative effects during inflation using the well established thermal
equilibrium approximation. This approximation does not completely represent the
actual physical system and earlier work has shown relaxing both the equilibrium
and low temperature constraints can substantially enlarge the warm inflation
regime, but these improvements still need further theoretical development.
