English

Despicable Dark Relics: generated by gravity with unconstrained masses

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2019-04-24 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We demonstrate the existence of a generic, efficient and purely gravitational channel producing a significant abundance of dark relics during reheating after the end of inflation. The mechanism is present for any inert scalar with the non-minimal curvature coupling ξRχ2\xi R\chi^2 and the relic production is efficient for natural values ξ=O(1)\xi = {\cal O}(1). The observed dark matter abundance can be reached for a broad range of relic masses extending from m1keVm \sim 1 {\rm k eV} to m108GeVm \sim 10^{8} {\rm GeV}, depending on the scale of inflation and the dark sector couplings. Frustratingly, such relics escape direct, indirect and collider searches since no non-gravitational couplings to visible matter are needed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.08236,
  title  = {Despicable Dark Relics: generated by gravity with unconstrained masses},
  author = {Malcolm Fairbairn and Kimmo Kainulainen and Tommi Markkanen and Sami Nurmi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.08236},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

24 pages, 8 figures, published in JCAP

R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:43:11.700Z