Gravitational misalignment mechanism of Dark Matter production

Abstract

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 time-dependent expectation value of the scalar, which decreases in the expanding Universe. As it drops below some critical value, the symmetry gets restored, and the Dark Matter field starts to oscillate around zero. We arrange the spontaneous symmetry breaking through the interaction of the scalar with the Ricci curvature. In that way, superheavy Dark Matter can be produced at very early times. Depending on its mass, the production takes place at inflation (very large masses up to the Grand Unification scale), at preheating, or at radiation-dominated stage (masses 10^{6}-10^{7} Gev).

18 pages, 3 figures; minor changes; matches journal version

References in corpus (4)

• The Standard Model Higgs boson as the inflaton
• Scalaron the mighty: producing dark matter and baryon asymmetry at reheating
• Some like it hot: $R^2$ heals Higgs inflation, but does not cool it
• Gravitational production of scalar dark matter

Cited by in corpus (10)

• NANOGrav spectral index $\gamma =3$ from melting domain walls
• Gravitational shine of dark domain walls
• Quintessential inflation: A tale of emergent and broken symmetries
• Beyond freeze-in: Dark Matter via inverse phase transition and gravitational wave signal
• Gravitational dark matter production in Palatini preheating
• Cogenesis of Baryon Asymmetry and Gravitational Dark Matter from Primordial Black Holes
• Gravitational waves from melting cosmic strings
• From Hubble to Bubble
• Jump Starting the Dark Sector with a Phase Transition
• Gravitational waves from a curvature-induced phase transition of a Higgs-portal dark matter sector