Related papers: Superheavy Dark Matter from Thermal Inflation
Within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), LHC bounds suggest that scalar superpartner masses are far above the electroweak scale. Given a high superpartner mass, nonthermal dark matter is a viable alternative to WIMP dark…
Building on recently constructed inflationary vector dark matter production mechanisms as well as studies of magnetogenesis, we show that an inflationary dark Schwinger mechanism can generate the observed dark matter relic abundance for…
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…
We show that both the baryon asymmetry of the Universe and the dark matter abundance can be explained within a single framework that makes use of maximally helical hypermagnetic fields produced during pseudoscalar inflation and the chiral…
When did the universe thermalize? In this talk I review the status of this issue and its importance in establishing the expected properties of dark matter, the growth of large-scale structure, and the viability of inflation models when…
The longitudinal mode of a massive vector field, generated during inflation, offers a well-motivated and phenomenologically rich candidate for dark matter. We show that a rapid variation in the mass of the vector boson, occurring during a…
Light dark-matter ($M\leq20$ MeV) particles freeze out after neutrino decoupling. If the dark-matter particle couples to a neutrino or an electromagnetic plasma, the late time entropy production from dark-matter annihilation can change the…
A dark matter overdensity around a black hole may significantly alter the dynamics of the black hole's merger with another compact object. We consider here intermediate mass-ratio inspirals of stellar-mass compact objects with…
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 consider the fate of the observable universe in the light of the discovery of a dark energy component to the cosmic energy budget. We extend results for a cosmological constant to a general dark energy component and examine the…
The phase of inflationary expansion in the early universe produces superheavy relics in a mass window between 10^{12} GeV and 10^{14} GeV. Decay or annihilation of these superheavy relics can explain the observed ultrahigh energy cosmic…
We propose a new thermal freezeout mechanism which results in dark matter masses exceeding the unitarity bound by many orders of magnitude, without violating perturbative unitarity or modifying the standard cosmology. The process…
Cosmological inflation generates primordial density perturbations on all scales, including those far too small to contribute to the cosmic microwave background. At these scales, isolated ultracompact minihalos of dark matter can form well…
Biswas et al. found that the thermal relic density of a dark matter particle freezing out while the universe's energy density is dominated by a non-standard extra component $\phi$, whose energy density redshifts faster than radiation, can…
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…
Primordial inflation and Dark Matter (DM) could both belong to the hidden sector. It is therefore plausible that the inflaton, which drives inflation, could couple to the DM either directly or indirectly, thus providing a common origin for…
If, during the early Universe epoch, the dark matter particle thermalizes in a hidden sector which does not thermalize with the Standard Model thermal bath, its relativistic thermal decoupling can easily lead to the observed relic density,…
Kibble mechanism drastically underestimates the production of topological defects, as confirmed recently in atomic and condensed matter systems. If non-thermally produced, they can be cosmological dark matter of mass 1-10 PeV. If…
We study the formation of primordial black holes (PBHs) in the early Universe during a period of slow reheating after inflation. We demonstrate how the PBH formation mechanism may change even before the end of the matter-dominated phase and…
A kinetic mixing between the axion and the inflaton allows for a production of axion dark matter even if the inflationary Hubble scale is smaller than the zero-temperature axion mass. We analyze the axion dynamics in this recently…