Related papers: Thermal Misalignment of Scalar Dark Matter
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…
Oscillating ultra-light scalar fields are a natural explanation for the dark matter in our universe, as long as a mechanism, often called a misalignment mechanism, exists to explain the amplitude of the scalar oscillations. If the dark…
Thermal misalignment is a viable dark matter scenario where the misalignment of a dark matter scalar, feebly coupled to the Standard Model particles, is generated through thermal effects from the primordial plasma. In this framework, the…
We consider Dark Matter composed of an oscillating singlet scalar field. On top of the mass term, the scalar is equipped with a potential spontaneously breaking Z_2-symmetry. This potential dominates at early times and leads to the…
Motivated by their potential role as dark matter, we study the cosmological evolution of light scalar and vector fields non-minimally coupled to gravity. Our focus is on a situation where the dominant contribution to the energy density…
A light singlet scalar field feebly coupled through the super-renormalizable Higgs portal provides a minimal and well-motivated realization of ultra-light bosonic dark matter. We study the cosmological production of dark matter in this…
If there is a scalar boson field interacting dominantly with a quark or a lepton in the thermal background, its coherent oscillation can be generated through the thermal effect and becomes a good dark matter candidate in a wide range of the…
A coherent field over the entire universe is an attractive picture in studying the dark sector of the universe. The misalignment mechanism, which relies on inflation to achieve homogeneousness of the field, is a popular mechanism for…
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 consider the production of axion dark matter through the misalignment mechanism in the context of a nonstandard cosmological history involving early matter domination by a scalar field with a time-dependent decay rate. In cases where the…
We discuss the possibility that dark matter corresponds to an oscillating scalar field coupled to the Higgs boson. We argue that the initial field amplitude should generically be of the order of the Hubble parameter during inflation, as a…
In the conventional misalignment mechanism, the axion field has a constant initial field value in the early universe and later begins to oscillate. We present an alternative scenario where the axion field has a nonzero initial velocity,…
We propose to search for scalar dark matter via its effects on the electromagnetic fine-structure constant and particle masses. Scalar dark matter that forms an oscillating classical field produces `slow' linear-in-time drifts and…
We consider a long range scalar force that mainly couples to dark matter and unstable Standard Model states, like the muon, with tiny strength. Probing this type of force would present a challenge to observations. We point out that the…
We show that the present dark matter abundance can be accounted for by an oscillating scalar field that acquires both mass and a non-zero expectation value from interactions with the Higgs field. The dark matter scalar field can be…
We propose an alternative scenario for the axion misalignment mechanism based on the nontrivial interplay between the axion and a light dilaton in the early universe. Dark matter abundance is still sourced by the initial misalignment of the…
Scalar fields in the minimal supersymmetric standard model may have large field values during inflation. Because of approximate global symmetry, it is plausible that the phase directions of them are nearly massless during inflation and…
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…
We present a new mechanism for producing the correct relic abundance of dark photon dark matter over a wide range of its mass, extending down to $10^{-20}\,\mathrm{eV}$. The dark matter abundance is initially stored in an axion which is…
Coherent oscillations of a scalar field can mimic the behavior of a perfect fluid with an equation-of-state parameter determined by the properties of the potential, possibly driving accelerated expansion in the early Universe (inflation)…