Spectator Dark Matter

Abstract

The observed dark matter abundance in the Universe can be fully accounted for by a minimally coupled spectator scalar field that was light during inflation and has sufficiently strong self-coupling. In this scenario, dark matter was produced during inflation by amplification of quantum fluctuations of the spectator field. The self-interaction of the field suppresses its fluctuations on large scales, and therefore avoids isocurvature constraints. The scenario does not require any fine-tuning of parameters. In the simplest case of a single real scalar field, the mass of the dark matter particle would be in the range $1\mathrm{GeV}\lesssim m\lesssim 10^8\mathrm{GeV}$, depending on the scale of inflation, and the lower bound for the quartic self-coupling is $\lambda \gtrsim 0.45$.

9 pages, 5 figures. v2: Minor changes, matches the published version

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