Related papers: Resonant Vector Dark Matter Production during Infl…
We formulate new conformal models of inflation and dark energy which generalise the Higgs-Dilaton scenario. We embed these models in unimodular gravity whose effect is to break scale invariance in the late time Universe. In the early…
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…
Post-inflationary reheating is a widely discussed mechanism for non-thermal production of dark matter (DM). In this scenario the momentum distribution of the produced DM particles is usually taken to be the one obtained at reheating,…
We show that the modulated reheating mechanism can naturally account for dark radiation, whose existence is hinted by recent observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation and the primordial Helium abundance. In this mechanism,…
We study perturbative reheating at the end of fibre inflation where the inflaton is a closed string modulus with a Starobinsky-like potential. We first derive the spectral index $n_s$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ as a function of the…
The dark matter in the universe can be in the form of a superheavy matter species (WIMPZILLA). Several mechanisms have been proposed for the production of WIMPZILLA particles during or immediately following the inflationary epoch. Perhaps…
We explore the observational consequences of resonant particle production during inflation, focusing on its impact on dark matter annihilation signals today. A transient burst of particle production generates localised features in the…
We investigate the gravitational production of superheavy scalar fields with nonminimal coupling during and after inflation. We derive analytical approximations using the mode function solution in a de Sitter background and also apply the…
We propose a new mechanism to generate primordial curvature perturbations, based on the resonant production of particles during inflation. It is known that this phenomenon can trap the inflaton for a fraction of e-fold. This effect is…
Recent large scale structure observations, including COBE, have prompted many authors to discuss modifications of the standard Cold Dark Matter model. Two of these, a tilted spectrum and a gravitational wave contribution to COBE, are at…
The QCD axion is one of the best motivated dark matter candidates. The misalignment mechanism is well known to produce an abundance of the QCD axion consistent with dark matter for an axion decay constant of order $10^{12}$ GeV. For a…
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…
If dark matter is made of QCD axions, its abundance is determined by the vacuum expectation value acquired by the axion field during inflation. The axion is usually assumed to follow the equilibrium distribution arising from quantum…
We describe the challenges and pathways when probing inflaton as dark matter with the stochastic gravitational waves (GWs) signal generated during the (p)reheating. Such scenarios are of utmost interest when no other interaction between the…
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…
The current cosmological constraints on a dark matter axion are reviewed. We describe the basic mechanisms by which axions are created in the early universe, both in the standard thermal scenario in which axion strings form and in…
We investigate inflationary particle production associated with a spectator ultralight scalar field, which has been recently proposed as a plausible dark matter candidate. In this framework, we select the Starobinsky potential to drive the…
Within the framework of an explicit dynamical model, in which we calculate the radiatively-corrected, tree-level potential that sets up inflation, we show that the inflaton can be a significant part of dark matter today. We exhibit…
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 assume axion-like particles (ALPs) to provide the full dark matter abundance and derive various lower bounds on the ALP mass. We contrast the post- and pre-inflationary symmetry breaking cases and present allowed regions in the plane of…