WIMPflation
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2019-03-13 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Abstract
We propose a class of models in which a stable inflaton is produced as a thermal relic in the early universe and constitutes the dark matter. We show that inflaton annihilations can efficiently reheat the universe, and identify several examples of inflationary potentials that can accommodate all cosmic microwave background observables and in which the inflaton dark matter candidate has a weak scale mass. As a simple example, we consider annihilations that take place through a Higgs portal interaction, leading to encouraging prospects for future direct detection experiments.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1807.03308,
title = {WIMPflation},
author = {Dan Hooper and Gordan Krnjaic and Andrew J. Long and Samuel D. McDermott},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.03308},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
4+epsilon pages, 3 figures