Despicable Dark Relics: generated by gravity with unconstrained masses

Abstract

We demonstrate the existence of a generic, efficient and purely gravitational channel producing a significant abundance of dark relics during reheating after the end of inflation. The mechanism is present for any inert scalar with the non-minimal curvature coupling $\xi R{\chi }^2$ and the relic production is efficient for natural values $\xi =\mathcal{O}(1)$. The observed dark matter abundance can be reached for a broad range of relic masses extending from $m\sim 1\mathrm{keV}$ to $m\sim 10^8\mathrm{GeV}$, depending on the scale of inflation and the dark sector couplings. Frustratingly, such relics escape direct, indirect and collider searches since no non-gravitational couplings to visible matter are needed.

24 pages, 8 figures, published in JCAP

References in corpus (8)

• The Dawn of FIMP Dark Matter: A Review of Models and Constraints
• Can sterile neutrinos be the dark matter?
• How cold is cold dark matter? Small scales constraints from the flux power spectrum of the high-redshift Lyman-alpha forest
• Isocurvature bounds on axions revisited
• Universality far from equilibrium: From superfluid Bose gases to heavy-ion collisions
• Irruption of massive particle species during inflation
• Electroweak Vacuum Metastability and Low-scale Inflation
• Light scalars on cosmological backgrounds

Cited by in corpus (39)

• Completely Dark Photons from Gravitational Particle Production During Inflation
• Hearing without seeing: gravitational waves from hot and cold hidden sectors
• Misalignment & Co.: (Pseudo-)scalar and vector dark matter with curvature couplings
• The Higgs Portal to Cosmology
• Trans-Planckian Censorship, Inflation and Dark Matter
• Superheavy scalar dark matter from gravitational particle production in $\alpha$-attractor models of inflation
• Gravitational Production of Superheavy Dark Matter and Associated Cosmological Signatures
• Hubble-induced phase transitions on the lattice with applications to Ricci reheating
• Snowmass2021 Cosmic Frontier White Paper: Ultraheavy particle dark matter
• Gravitational shine of dark domain walls
• Quintessential inflation: A tale of emergent and broken symmetries
• Gravitational production of scalar dark matter
• Open quantum dynamics induced by light scalar fields
• Gravitational dark matter production in Palatini preheating
• Real Scalar Dark Matter: Relativistic Treatment
• Impact of Higgs portal on gravity-mediated production of superheavy dark matter
• Displaced new physics at colliders and the early universe before its first second
• Cogenesis of Baryon Asymmetry and Gravitational Dark Matter from Primordial Black Holes
• Deciphering the Archaeological Record: Cosmological Imprints of Non-Minimal Dark Sectors
• Dark matter production via a non-minimal coupling to gravity
• Gravitational reheating and superheavy Dark Matter creation after inflation with non-minimal coupling
• Quantum interference in gravitational particle production
• Non-equilibrium dynamics of a scalar field with quantum backreaction
• Gravitational misalignment mechanism of Dark Matter production
• Dark matter production and reheating via direct inflaton couplings: collective effects
• Flavour mixing transport theory and resonant leptogenesis
• Tachyonic production of dark relics: a non-perturbative quantum study
• Primordial dark matter from curvature induced symmetry breaking
• Gravitational Dark Matter from Minimal Preheating
• Mass-varying Dark Matter from a Phase Transition
• Spectator dark matter in non-standard cosmologies
• Irreducible cosmological backgrounds of a real scalar with a broken symmetry
• Late vacuum choice and slow roll approximation in gravitational particle production during reheating
• Purely gravitational dark matter production in warm inflation
• Gravitational Wave Probe of Gravitational Dark Matter from Preheating
• Estimation of gravitational production uncertainties
• Gravitational SIMPs
• Physical scale adiabatic regularization in cosmological spacetimes
• On gravitational preheating