Related papers: Ultraviolet Freeze-in with a Time-dependent Inflat…
We study the post-inflationary dynamics for reheating and freeze-in dark matter in the Higgs-$R^2$ inflation model. Taking the perturbative approach for reheating, we determine the evolution of the temperature for radiation bath produced…
If the dark matter mass $m$ exceeds the maximum temperature of the Universe ($T_{\rm max} < m$), then its production rate will be Boltzmann suppressed. The important implications of this Boltzmann suppression have been explored for dark…
Freeze-in dark matter (DM) mediated by a light ($\ll$ keV) weakly-coupled dark-photon is an important benchmark for the emerging low-mass direct detection program. Since this is one of the only predictive, detectable freeze-in models, we…
We discuss a scenario that gravitinos produced non-thermally by an inflaton decay constitute dark matter in the present universe. We find that this scenario is realized for wide ranges of the inflaton mass and the vacuum expectation value.…
We generalize dark matter production to a two-metric framework whereby the physical metric, which couples to the Standard Model (SM), is conformally and/or disformally related to the metric governing the gravitational dynamics. We show that…
We study dark matter production from mediator decays in scenarios with an epoch of early matter domination. Particles that mediate interactions between dark matter and the standard model particles are kinematically accessible to the thermal…
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…
Dark matter freeze-in is a compelling cosmological production mechanism in which all or some of the observed abundance of dark matter is generated through feeble interactions it has with the Standard Model. In this work we present the first…
Quantifying the imprints of freeze-in dark matter (DM) on cosmological structures requires knowledge of its phase-space distribution. We investigate how variations in the cosmological history before nucleosynthesis, the "weather" of that…
We consider the direct $s$-channel gravitational production of dark matter during the reheating process. Independent of the identity of the dark matter candidate or its non-gravitational interactions, the gravitational process is always…
Predictivity of many non-thermal dark matter (DM) models is marred by the gravitational production background. This problem is ameliorated in models with lower reheating temperature $T_R$, which allows for dilution of gravitationally…
In order for the inflaton to decay into radiation at the end of inflation, it needs to couple to light matter fields. In this article we determine whether such couplings cause the inflaton to decay during inflation rather than after it. We…
If the dark matter is produced in the early universe prior to Big Bang nucleosynthesis, a modified cosmological history can drastically affect the abundance of relic dark matter particles. Here, we assume that an additional species to…
We study models in which the inflaton is coupled to two otherwise decoupled sectors, and the effect of preheating and related processes on their energy densities during the evolution of the universe. Over most of parameter space, preheating…
If dark matter (DM) is unstable, in order to be present today, its lifetime needs to be longer than the age of the Universe, t_U ~ 4 10^{17} s. It is usually assumed that if DM decays it would do it with some strength through a radiative…
We propose a new thermal dark matter candidate whose abundance is determined by the freezeout of inverse decays. The relic abundance depends parametrically only on a decay width, while matching the observed value requires that the coupling…
The freeze-in mechanism for dark matter (DM) requires extremely feeble interactions with the Standard Model (SM), preventing thermal equilibrium in the early Universe and typically evading experimental detection. However, for sufficiently…
We investigate the production of dark matter (DM) via a heavy $Z'$ mediator during the post-inflationary reheating epoch. In particular, we study production from three mechanisms which are smoothly connected to one another: WIMP-like…
We propose an alternate, calculable mechanism of dark matter genesis, "thermal freeze-in," involving a Feebly Interacting Massive Particle (FIMP) interacting so feebly with the thermal bath that it never attains thermal equilibrium. As with…
If cosmic inflation was driven by an electrically neutral scalar field stable on cosmological time scales, the field necessarily constitutes all or part of dark matter (DM). We study this possibility in a scenario where the inflaton field…