Related papers: Light Dark Photon Dark Matter from Inflation
The seed of dark matter can be generated from light spectator fields during inflation through a similar mechanism that the seed of observed large scale structures are produced from the inflaton field. The accumulated energy density of the…
We study the effects on particle production of a Planck-suppressed coupling between the inflaton and a scalar dark matter candidate, $\chi$. In the absence of this coupling, the dominant source for the relic density of $\chi$ is the long…
Dark matter (DM) may have its origin in a pre-Big Bang epoch, the cosmic inflation. Here, we consider for the first time a broad class of scenarios where a massive free scalar field unavoidably reaches an equilibrium between its classical…
We present a model of dark matter in a warped extra dimension in which the dark sector mass scales are naturally generated without supersymmetry. The dark force, responsible for dark matter annihilating predominantly into leptons, is…
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…
We propose a new mechanism for magnetic field generation from inflation, by which strong magnetic fields can be generated on cosmological scales. These fields may be observable by cosmic microwave background radition measurements, and may…
We explore the cosmology and phenomenology of millicharged and millicharge-like dark matter with masses from 1 eV to 10 keV and charges of $10^{-18}$ to $10^{-14}$. Dark matter in this mass range cannot be thermally produced, but can arise…
We investigate the production of non-thermal fermionic dark matter particles during the reheating era following slow roll inflation, driven by inflaton $\varphi$ non-minimally coupled to the curvature scalar, $\mathcal{R}$. Two types of…
We study preheating in theories where the inflaton couples derivatively to scalar and gauge fields. Such couplings may dominate in natural models of inflation, in which the flatness of the inflaton potential is related to an approximate…
We analyze the limits on resonant particle production during inflation based upon the power spectrum of fluctuations in matter and the cosmic microwave background. We show that such a model is consistent with features observed in the matter…
Recent work has suggested that an additional $\lesssim 6.9 \rm{\, eV}$ per baryon of heating in the intergalactic medium is needed to reconcile hydrodynamical simulations with Lyman-$\alpha$ forest absorption line widths at redshift…
We study cosmological gravitational particle production as applied to "rapid-turn" models of inflation involving two scalar fields. We are interested in the production of massive spin-0 particles that only interact gravitationally and…
We investigate the relic abundance of asymmetric Dark Matter where the asymmetric Dark Matter is non--thermally produced from the decay of heavier particles in addition to the usual thermal production. We discuss the relic density of…
A new channel of direct photon production from a quark gluon plasma (QGP) is explored. This process appears at Next-to-Leading-Order in the presence of a charge asymmetry in the heated matter and may be effectively described as the…
"Dark Photons", light new vector particles V kinetically mixed with the photon, are a frequently considered extension of the Standard Model. For masses below 10 keV they are emitted from the solar interior. In the limit of small mass m_V…
Dark matter coupled solely gravitationally can be produced through the decay of primordial black holes in the early universe. If the dark matter is lighter than the initial black hole temperature, it could be warm enough to be subject to…
For the minimal QCD axion model it is generally believed that overproduction of dark matter constrains the axion mass to be above a certain threshold, or at least that the initial misalignment angle must be tuned if the mass is below that…
String scenarios generically predict that we live in a so called axiverse: the Universe with about a hundred of light axion species which are decoupled from the Standard Model particles. However, the axions can couple to the inflaton which…
The detection of massless kinetically-mixed dark photons is notoriously difficult, as the effect of this mixing can be removed by a field redefinition in vacuum. In this work, we study the prospect of detecting massless dark photons in the…
The formation of structure in the Universe offers some of the most powerful evidence in favour of the existence of dark matter in the Universe. We summarize recent work by ourselves and our collaborators, using linear and quasi-linear…