WIMPflation

Abstract

We propose a class of models in which a stable inflaton is produced as a thermal relic in the early universe and constitutes the dark matter. We show that inflaton annihilations can efficiently reheat the universe, and identify several examples of inflationary potentials that can accommodate all cosmic microwave background observables and in which the inflaton dark matter candidate has a weak scale mass. As a simple example, we consider annihilations that take place through a Higgs portal interaction, leading to encouraging prospects for future direct detection experiments.

4+epsilon pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (23)

• Tracing the high energy theory of gravity: an introduction to Palatini inflation
• Lighting the Dark: The Evolution of the Post-Inflationary Universe
• ALP inflation and Big Bang on Earth
• A Dark Matter Interpretation of the ANITA Anomalous Events
• Warm Little Inflaton becomes Cold Dark Matter
• The Inflaton Portal to a Highly decoupled EeV Dark Matter Particle
• Formation of inflaton halos after inflation
• Inflaton Clusters and Inflaton Stars
• Signatures of Non-thermal Dark Matter with Kination and Early Matter Domination: Gravitational Waves versus Laboratory Searches
• Polynomial Inflation and Dark Matter
• Weyl Scaling Invariant $R^2$ Gravity for Inflation and Dark Matter
• Weyl Symmetry Inspired Inflation and Dark Matter
• Challenges for Inflaton Dark Matter
• Common origin of modified chaotic inflation, non thermal dark matter and Dirac neutrino mass
• Inflection-point Inflation and Dark Matter Redux
• Connecting between inflation and dark matter in models with gauged $Z_3$ symmetry
• Reheating constraints to WIMPflation
• Detectable Gravitational Waves from preheating probes non-thermal Dark Matter
• Non-minimal Coupling Inflation and Dark Matter under the ${\mathbb{Z}}_3$ Symmetry
• Axion-like particle inflation and dark matter
• A Model of Neutrino Mass, Baryon Asymmetry, and Asymmetric Dark Matter with $SU(2{)}_D\otimes U(1{)}_{D^{\prime }}$ Dark Sector
• Supersymmetric $\nu$-Inflaton Dark Matter
• Post-inflationary production of particle Dark Matter: Hilltop and Coleman-Weinberg inflation