Darkflation -- one scalar to rule them all?

Abstract

The problem of explaining both inflationary and dark matter physics in the framework of a minimal extension of the Standard Model was investigated. To this end, the Standard Model completed by a real scalar singlet playing a role of the dark matter candidate has been considered. We assumed both the dark matter field and the Higgs doublet to be nonminimally coupled to gravity. Using quantum field theory in curved spacetime we derived an effective action for the inflationary period and analyzed its consequences. In this approach, after integrating out both dark matter and Standard Model sectors we obtained the effective action expressed purely in terms of the gravitational field. We paid special attention to determination, by explicit calculations, of the form of coefficients controlling the higher-order in curvature gravitational terms. Their connection to the Standard Model coupling constants has been discussed.

22 pages, 6 figures, references expanded, version accepted for publication in the Physics of the Dark Universe

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Scale-invariant inflation with one-loop quantum corrections
• Curved spacetime effective field theory (cEFT) -- construction with the heat kernel method