Related papers: Correlation between Dark Matter and Dark Radiation…
After inflation the Universe presumably undergoes a phase of reheating which in effect starts the thermal big bang cosmology. However, so far we have very little direct experimental or observational evidence of this important phase of the…
Recent cosmological measurements favour additional relativistic energy density beyond the one provided by the three active neutrinos and photons of the Standard Model (SM). This is often referred to as "dark radiation", suggesting the need…
In this talk, I will discuss the mechanism of nonthermal production of the neutralino cold dark matter from the decay of cosmic strings and the embedded defects, the $\pi$ and $\eta^\prime$ strings in the strong interaction sector of the…
Recent developments in string theory have led to "realistic" string compactifications which lead to moduli stabilization while generating a hierarchy between the Electroweak and Planck scales at the same time. However, this seems to suggest…
We study the possible decay of a coherently oscillating scalar field, interpreted as dark matter, into light fermions. Specifically, we consider a scalar field with sub-eV mass decaying into a Fermi sea of neutrinos. We recognize the…
Although Planck data supports the standard \Lambda CDM model, it still allows for the presence of Dark Radiation corresponding up to about half an extra standard neutrino species. We propose a scenario for obtaining a fractional "effective…
We study well-motivated dark matter candidates arising from weakly-coupled hidden sectors in compactified string/$M$-theory. Imposing generic top-down constraints greatly restricts allowed candidates. By considering the possible mechanisms…
Light new vector bosons can be produced gravitationally through quantum fluctuations during inflation; if these particles are feebly coupled and cosmologically metastable, they can account for the observed dark matter abundance. However, in…
We study the phenomenology of superheavy decaying dark matter with mass around $10^{10}$ GeV which can arise in the low-energy limit of string compactifications. Generic features of string theory setups (such as high scale supersymmetry…
The supersymmetrized DFSZ axion model is especially compelling in that it contains 1. the SUSY solution to the gauge hierarchy problem, 2. the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) solution to the strong CP problem and 3. the Kim-Nilles solution to the SUSY mu…
It is possible that the strongest interactions between dark matter and the Standard Model occur via the neutrino sector. Unlike gamma rays and charged particles, neutrinos provide a unique avenue to probe for astrophysical sources of dark…
Dark radiation, parameterized in terms of $N_{\rm eff}$, has been considered many times in the literature as a possible remedy in alleviating the Hubble constant ($H_0$) tension. We review here the effect of such an extra dark radiation…
Hidden sector glueball dark matter is well motivated by string theory, compactifications of which often have extra gauge groups uncoupled to the visible sector. We study the dynamics of glueballs in theories with a period of late time…
The string/$M$ theory Axiverse -- a plethora of very light Axion Like Particles (ALPs) with a vast range of masses -- is arguably a generic prediction of string/$M$ theory. String/$M$ theory also tends to predict that the early Universe is…
It is widely believed that string theory easily allows for a QCD axion in the cosmologically favoured mass range. The required small decay constant, $f_a\ll M_P$, can be implemented by using a large compactification volume. This points to…
Light, weakly coupled sectors can retain information about the cosmological background in which they are produced. We study light axions produced during reheating and their contribution to dark radiation, $\Delta N_{\rm eff}$. We develop a…
Recent analyses of WMAP9 data show that dark radiation-- parametrized by the apparent number of additional neutrinos \Delta N_{eff} contributing to the cosmic expansion-- is consistent with the Standard Model and bounded from above by about…
We demonstrate that asymmetric reheating arises in a large ensemble of string compactifications with many axions and gauged dark sectors. This phenomenon may help avoid numerous cosmological problems that may arise if the sectors were…
We consider the generic possibility that the Universe's energy budget includes some form of relativistic or semi-relativistic dark radiation (DR) with non-gravitational interactions with Standard Model (SM) particles. Such dark radiation…
We study perturbative reheating at the end of fibre inflation where the inflaton is a closed string modulus with a Starobinsky-like potential. We first derive the spectral index $n_s$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ as a function of the…