Related papers: New Constraints on Dark Matter Production during K…
An era of kination occurs when the Universe's energy density is dominated by a fast-rolling scalar field. Dark matter that is thermally produced during an era of kination requires larger-than-canonical annihilation cross sections to…
We consider the decay of a massive particle under the complete or partial domination of the kinetic energy density generated by a quintessential exponential model and we impose a number of observational constraints originating from…
If the Universe's energy density was dominated by a fast-rolling scalar field while the radiation bath was hot enough to thermally produce dark matter, then dark matter with larger-than-canonical annihilation cross sections can generate the…
The evolution of the Universe between inflation and the onset of big bang nucleosynthesis is difficult to probe and largely unconstrained. This ignorance profoundly limits our understanding of dark matter: we cannot calculate its thermal…
The generation of a kination-dominated phase by a quintessential exponential model is investigated and the parameters of the model are restricted so that a number of observational constraints (originating from nucleosynthesis, the present…
Understanding the nature of the Dark Matter (DM) is one of the current challenges in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Knowing the properties of the DM particle would shed light on physics beyond the Standard Model and even provide us with…
The non-thermal production of dark matter (DM) usually requires very tiny couplings of the dark sector with the visible sector and therefore is notoriously challenging to hunt in laboratory experiments. Here we propose a novel pathway to…
Thermal freeze-out or freeze-in during a period of early matter domination can give rise to the correct dark matter abundance for $\langle \sigma_{\rm ann} v \rangle_{\rm f} < 3 \times 10^{-26}$ cm$^3$ s$^{-1}$. In the standard scenario, a…
If the dark matter is produced in the early universe prior to Big Bang nucleosynthesis, a modified cosmological history can drastically affect the abundance of relic dark matter particles. Here, we assume that an additional species to…
It is usually assumed that dark matter is produced during the radiation dominated era. There is, however, no direct evidence for radiation domination prior to big-bang nucleosynthesis. Two non-standard thermal histories are considered. In…
The Universe's early thermal history is poorly constrained, and it is possible that it underwent a period of early matter domination driven by a heavy particle or an oscillating scalar field that decayed into radiation before the onset of…
A period of early matter domination can give rise to the correct dark matter abundance for a broad range of dark matter annihilation rate $\langle \sigma_{\rm ann} v \rangle_{\rm f}$. Here, we examine this scenario for situations where…
Since the thermal history of the Universe is unknown before the epoch of primordial nucleosynthesis, the largest temperature of the radiation dominated phase (the reheating temperature) might have been as low as 1 MeV. We perform a…
Freeze-out or freeze-in during a period of early matter domination can yield the correct dark matter abundance for small values of the velocity-averaged annihilation cross section, $\langle \sigma_{\rm ann} v \rangle_{\rm f} < 3 \times…
The relic abundance of thermal dark matter particles is generally assumed to be inversely proportional to their annihilation rate, which is therefore constrained by the present matter density, <sigma v> ~ 10^{-26} Omega_{dm}^{-1} cm^3…
We estimate dark matter density for the Universe with a reheating temperature smaller than the mass of dark matter, assuming dark matter to be a weakly interacting massive particle. During the reheating process, an inflaton decays and…
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…
In the first stages of inflationary reheating, the temperature of the radiation produced by inflaton decays is typically higher than the commonly defined reheating temperature $T_{RH} \sim (\Gamma_\phi M_P)^{1/2}$ where $\Gamma_\phi$ is the…
We provide a detailed study of reheating in the kination regime where particle content is created by gravitational production of massive scalars mutually interacting with a massless scalar field. The produced particles subsequently decay…
We study dark matter production from mediator decays in scenarios with an epoch of early matter domination. Particles that mediate interactions between dark matter and the standard model particles are kinematically accessible to the thermal…