Related papers: Reheating and Dark Matter Production
We present a model where the inflaton can naturally account for all the dark matter in the Universe within the warm inflation paradigm. In particular, we show that the symmetries of the Warm Little Inflaton scenario (i) avoid large thermal…
We study in detail a recently proposed mechanism for producing non-thermal dark photon dark matter at the end of inflation in the mass range $\mu\,{\rm eV} \lesssim m \lesssim 10\,{\rm TeV}$. A tachyonic instability induced by a rolling…
Models in which the dark matter is produced at extremely low rates from the annihilation of Standard Model particles in the early Universe allow us to explain the current dark matter relic density while easily evading the traditional…
We consider the conditions for the decay products of perturbative inflaton decay to thermalize. The importance of considering the full spectrum of inflaton decay products in the thermalization process is emphasized. It is shown that the…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are among the best-motivated dark matter candidates. In the standard scenario where the freeze-out occurs well after the end of inflationary reheating, they are in tension with the severe…
We discuss inflation and dark matter in the inert doublet model coupled non-minimally to gravity where the inert doublet is the inflaton and the neutral scalar part of the doublet is the dark matter candidate. We calculate the various…
In this conference paper we summarise the findings of a recent study, where the impact of the ultra-relativistic regime on the production of a feebly interacting dark matter particle is considered. As its population accumulates over the…
Cosmological reheating bridges the inflationary epoch and the hot big bang phase, yet its underlying dynamics remain poorly understood. In this work, we investigate a minimal scenario in which the inflaton evolves under a simple power-law…
We present a detailed examination of thermalization after inflation for perturbative inflaton decay. Different interactions among particles in the plasma of inflaton decay products are considered and it will be shown that 2 -> 2 scatterings…
The aim of this paper is to determine an exact definition of the reheat temperature for a generic perturbative decay of the inflaton. In order to estimate the reheat temperature, there are two important conditions one needs to satisfy: (a)…
Assuming axions are potential dark matter (DM) candidate that make up all of the DM abundance, we discuss production of axions via (i) standard misalignment mechanism during the period of reheating and (ii) graviton-mediated 2-to-2…
Reheating in string compactifications is generically driven by the decay of the lightest modulus which produces Standard Model particles, dark matter and light hidden sector degrees of freedom that behave as dark radiation. This common…
We study a novel dark matter production mechanism based on the freeze-in through semi-production, i.e. the inverse semi-annihilation processes. A peculiar feature of this scenario is that the production rate is suppressed by a small initial…
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…
We propose a methodology to infer the reheat temperature ($T_{\rm RH}$) of the Universe from the collider signal of freezing in dark matter (DM). We demonstrate it for the mono-$\gamma$ signal at the electron-positron colliders, which…
A compelling way to address the inflationary period is via the warm inflation scenario, where the interaction of the inflaton field with other degrees of freedom affects its dynamics in such a way that slow-roll inflation is maintained by…
The inflaton must convert its energy into radiation after inflation, which, in a conventional scenario, is caused by the perturbative inflaton decay. This reheating process would be much more complicated in some cases: the decay products…
Weakly- and Feebly-Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs and FIMPs) are among the best-motivated dark matter (DM) candidates. In this paper, we investigate the production of DM through the WIMP and FIMP mechanisms during inflationary…
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…
The inclusion of a period of (effective) matter domination following inflation and prior to the onset of radiation domination has interesting and observable consequences for structure growth. During this early matter-dominated era (EMDE),…