Related papers: Phasing out Dark Matter Isocurvature with Thermal …
Calculating the abundance of thermally produced dark matter particles has become a standard procedure, with sophisticated methods guaranteeing a precision that matches the percent-level accuracy in the observational determination of the…
We study thermally induced density perturbations during inflation. This scenario is characterized by two thermodynamical conditions: (1) The primordial perturbations originate in the epoch when the inflationary universe contains a…
Misalignment dynamics, the non-equilibrium evolution of a scalar (or pseudoscalar) condensate in a potential landscape, broadly describes a solution to the strong CP problem, a mechanism for cold dark matter production and (pre) reheating…
The cosmological abundance of dark matter can be significantly influenced by the temperature dependence of particle masses and vacuum expectation values. We illustrate this point in three simple freeze-in models. The first one, which we…
We propose that dark energy in the form of a scalar field could effectively couple to dark matter inhomogeneities. Through this coupling energy could be transferred to/from the scalar field, which could possibly enter an accelerated regime.…
We examine an intriguing possibility that a single field is responsible for both inflation and dark matter, focussing on the minimal set-up where inflation is driven by a scalar coupling to curvature. We study in detail the reheating…
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…
We assume that dark matter is comprised of axion-like particles (ALPs) generated by the realignment mechanism in the post-inflationary scenario. This leads to isocurvature fluctuations with an amplitude of order one for scales comparable to…
We consider the possibility of an oscillating scalar field accounting for dark matter and dynamically controlling the spontaneous breaking of the electroweak symmetry through a Higgs-portal coupling. This requires a late decay of the…
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 study a new mechanism for the production of dark matter in the universe which does not rely on thermal equilibrium. Dark matter is populated from the thermal bath subsequent to inflationary reheating via a massive mediator whose mass is…
We show that curvature induced particle production at reheating generates adiabatic dark matter if there are non-minimally coupled spectator scalars weakly coupled to visible matter. The observed dark matter abundance implies an upper bound…
We investigate the out-of-equilibrium production of scalar dark matter (DM) from the inflaton condensate during inflation and reheating. We assume that this scalar couples only to the inflaton via a direct quartic coupling and is minimally…
We propose a new mechanism of non-thermal particle production during inflation based on a narrow parametric resonance, akin to the dynamics of post-inflationary preheating. The mechanism is based on the production of scalar particles with a…
It has recently been shown [1] that light vector particles produced from inflationary fluctuations can give rise to the dark matter in the Universe. A similar mechanism has been discussed in [2] for a non-minimally coupled scalar enjoying a…
The cosmological evolution of a scalar field is shaped by Hubble damping. Any non-gravitational couplings of the scalar with the primordial thermal bath generically contribute additional damping. Although rarely considered, such thermal…
This thesis begins with an introduction to the state of the art of modern Cosmology. The field of Particle Cosmology is then introduced and explored, in particular with regard to the study of cosmological inflation. We then introduce a new…
We calculate the production of a massive vector boson by quantum fluctuations during inflation. This gives a novel dark-matter production mechanism quite distinct from misalignment or thermal production. While scalars and tensors are…
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 the problem of the initial conditions and behaviour of the perturbations in scalar field cosmology with general potential. We use the general definition of adiabatic and isocurvature conditions to set the appropriate initial…