Related papers: Spectator Dark Matter
In this work we investigate the possibility that a simple extension of the Standard Model (SM) can be the dark matter of the universe. We postulate the existence of a scalar field singlet like the Higgs as an extra term in the SM…
The nature of the cosmological dark matter remains elusive. Recent studies have advocated the possibility that dark matter could be composed of ultra-light, self-interacting bosons, forming a Bose-Einstein condensate in the very early…
Over the past few decades, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. I begin with a review of the observational evidence for the existence of dark matter: rotation curves of…
Dark matter (comprising a quarter of the Universe) is usually assumed to be due to one and only one weakly interacting particle which is neutral and absolutely stable. We consider the possibility that there are several coexisting…
A rapid phase of accelerated expansion in the early universe, known as inflation, dilutes all matter except the vacuum induced quantum fluctuations. These are responsible for seeding the initial perturbations in the baryonic matter, the…
Thermal misalignment provides an alternative to the standard misalignment mechanism for the cosmological production of scalar dark matter. In this framework, feeble couplings to particles in the thermal bath generate a finite-temperature…
Following our previous work, we continue to explore gravitational dark matter production during the minimal preheating caused by inflaton self-resonance. In this situation there is only one dimensionless index parameter $n$ characterizing…
We consider the fate of the observable universe in the light of the discovery of a dark energy component to the cosmic energy budget. We extend results for a cosmological constant to a general dark energy component and examine the…
A scenario in which inflation, dark energy and dark matter can be unified into a single scalar field, the inflaton field $\phi$, is studied. The inflaton is identified with the sneutrino, the scalar partner of the heavy neutrino. We…
Dynamics of long-wave isocurvature perturbations during an inflationary stage in multiple (multi-component) inflationary models is calculated analytically for the case where scalar fields producing this stage interact between themselves…
Gravity takes care of both inflation and subsequent reheating in Starobinsky's R^2-model. The latter is due to inflaton gravitation decays dominated by scalar particle production. It is tempting to suggest that dark matter particles are…
We investigate the backreaction of the quantum fluctuations of a very light ($m \!\lesssim\! H_{\text{today}}$) nonminimally coupled spectator scalar field on the expansion dynamics of the Universe. The one-loop expectation value of the…
We study the effect of an explicit interaction between two scalar fields components describing dark matter in the context of a recent proposal framework for interaction. We find that, even assuming a very small coupling, it is sufficient to…
We study the quantum backreaction from inflationary fluctuations of a very light, non-minimally coupled spectator scalar and show that it is a viable candiate for dark energy. The problem is solved by suitably adapting the formalism of…
It is well known that Ultra-Light Dark Matter (ULDM), usually scalar fields of mass $m \sim 10^{-22}~{\rm eV}$, can solve some of the outstanding problems of the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) paradigm. Such a scalar field could have non-negligible…
The vacuum is filled with complex scalar fields, such as the Higgs field. These fields serve as order parameters for superfluidity (quantum phase coherence over macroscopic distances), making the entire universe a superfluid. We review a…
We propose that the dark matter abundance is set by the decoupling of inelastic scattering instead of annihilations. This coscattering mechanism is generically realized if dark matter scatters against states of comparable mass from the…
It is a puzzle why the densities of dark matter and dark energy are nearly equal today when they scale so differently during the expansion of the universe. This conundrum may be solved if there is a coupling between the two dark sectors. In…
We argue that the conjectured dark mater in the Universe may be endowed with a new kind of gravitational charge that couples to a short range gravitational interaction mediated by a massive vector field. A model is constructed that…
We demonstrate that in the presence of a light scalar spectator field, vacuum transitions taking place during inflation can produce large, potentially detectable non-Gaussian signatures in the primordial curvature perturbation. Such…