Related papers: Inflaxion Dark Matter
We present a scenario of vector dark matter production during inflation containing a complex inflaton field which is charged under a dark gauge field and which has a symmetry breaking potential. As the inflaton field rolls towards the…
It is usually assumed that during the reheating period of inflation the inflaton field behaves coherently and follows a classical path. It is pointed out that a background inflaton field \phi_0 falling down a potential density V(\phi) can…
It is well known that light scalar fields present during inflation are coherently excited. We show that if the field couples to gravity in a non-minimal way, the fluctuations at large scales are suppressed with respect to the small scales…
We study the stochastic axion dark matter scenario in the axion landscape, where one of the axions is light and stable and therefore explains dark matter. If the axion mass at the potential is a typical value of the curvature along the…
If a light axion is present during inflation and becomes part of dark matter afterwards, its quantum fluctuations contribute to dark matter isocurvature. In this article, we introduce a whole new suite of cosmological observables for axion…
A direct coupling between the inflaton and Standard Model gluons can dynamically raise the QCD confinement scale during inflation, making the axion temporarily heavy and suppressing axion isocurvature perturbations. As inflation proceeds,…
We investigate the creation of dark matter particles as a result of the decay of the scalar field in the framework of warm inflationary models, by using the irreversible thermodynamics of open systems with matter creation/annihilation. We…
The axion arises in well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics and is regarded as an alternative to the weakly interacting massive particle paradigm to explain the nature of dark matter. In this contribution, we…
The axion has emerged in recent years as a leading particle candidate to provide the mysterious dark matter in the cosmos, as we review here for a general scientific audience. We describe first the historical roots of the axion in the…
We present a scenario of vector dark matter production from symmetry breaking at the end of inflation. In this model, the accumulated energy density associated with the quantum fluctuations of the dark photon accounts for the present energy…
It has recently been shown [1] that light vector particles produced from inflationary fluctuations can give rise to the dark matter in the Universe. A similar mechanism has been discussed in [2] for a non-minimally coupled scalar enjoying a…
Theories with several hundred axion fields have enormous numbers of distinct meta-stable minima. A small fraction of these local minima have vacuum energy compatible with current measurements of dark energy. The potential also contains…
We propose a new mechanism to generate density perturbations in inflationary models. Spatial fluctuations in the decay rate of the inflaton field to ordinary matter lead to fluctuations in the reheating temperature. We argue that in most…
We propose a novel gravitational mechanism for the non-thermal production of dark matter driven by curvature-induced tachyonic instabilities after inflation. Departing from the commonly studied non-minimal couplings to gravity, our…
We investigate for viable models of inflation that can successfully produce dark matter (DM) from inflaton decay process, satisfying all the constraints from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and from some other observations. In particular,…
We propose a simple model where a {\it gauge invariant inflaton} is responsible for cosmic inflation and generates the seed for structure formation, while its relic {\it thermal} abundance explains the missing matter of the universe in the…
In an axiverse with numerous axions, the cosmological moduli problem poses a significant challenge because the abundance of axions can easily exceed that of dark matter. The well-established stochastic axion scenario offers a simple…
We demonstrate that the co-genesis of baryon asymmetry and dark matter can be achieved through the rotation of an axion-like particle, driven by a flip in the vacuum manifold's direction at the end of inflation. This can occur if the axion…
Axion rotations can simultaneously explain the dark matter abundance and the baryon asymmetry of the Universe by kinetic misalignment and axiogenesis. We consider a scenario in which the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking field is as large as…
We develop a quantum theory of inflaton and its decay product of various gauge boson pairs to investigate the preheating towards thermalized universe. The inflaton decay into gauge-boson pairs is shown to be inevitably accompanied by…