Light Dark Matter from Inflaton Decay

Abstract

We propose a simple mechanism of light dark matter (DM) production from the decay of the oscillating inflaton condensation. If the reheating temperature after inflation is higher than the inflaton mass, which is of the same order of the momentum of the DM at the time of the production, the DM momentum can be suppressed compared to the temperature of the thermal plasma if the interaction of the DM is weak enough. Consequently, the DM can be cold enough to avoid the observational constraints on the warm DM, like the Lyman-$\alpha$ bound even if the DM mass is small. We study the bosonic and fermionic DM production from the inflaton decay, taking into account the effect of the stimulated emission and Pauli blocking, respectively. In both cases, the DM can be cold and abundant enough to be a viable candidate of the DM. We also apply our mechanism to the production of isocurvature-problem-free axion DM and Dirac sea DM of right-handed neutrino consistent the seesaw relation for the active neutrino masses.

31 pages, 4 figures; version to appear in JHEP

References in corpus (70)

• Reheating after Inflation
• New experimental approaches in the search for axion-like particles
• New Constraints on the free-streaming of warm dark matter from intermediate and small scale Lyman-$\alpha$ forest data
• Supernova 1987A Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Sectors, Millicharged Particles, the QCD Axion, and an Axion-like Particle
• Vector Dark Matter from Inflationary Fluctuations
• Superheavy dark matter
• Classical decay of inflaton
• Tachyonic Instability and Dynamics of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking
• MeV-scale reheating temperature and thermalization of oscillating neutrinos by radiative and hadronic decays of massive particles
• Bounds on very low reheating scenarios after Planck
• The ORGAN Experiment: An axion haloscope above 15 GHz
• Nonthermal Supermassive Dark Matter
• A lower bound on the mass of Dark Matter particles
• Turbulent Thermalization
• Relic Abundance of Dark Photon Dark Matter
• Resonant detection of axion mediated forces with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
• Preheating with Trilinear Interactions: Tachyonic Resonance
• Dark Photon Dark Matter Produced by Axion Oscillations
• Dark Matter Axions Revisited
• Decay and Detection of a Light Scalar Boson Mixing with the Higgs
• Light inflaton Hunter's Guide
• The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment
• Parametric Resonance Production of Ultralight Vector Dark Matter
• Towards a new generation axion helioscope
• The Stochastic Axion Scenario
• Reheating and Post-inflationary Production of Dark Matter
• The QCD Axion Window and Low Scale Inflation
• Production of Purely Gravitational Dark Matter: The Case of Fermion and Vector Boson
• Update of axion CDM energy density
• The ALP miracle: unified inflaton and dark matter
• HOLMES - The Electron Capture Decay of 163Ho to Measure the Electron Neutrino Mass with sub-eV sensitivity
• A Proposal to Detect Dark Matter Using Axionic Topological Antiferromagnets
• Dark Matter Production in Late Time Reheating
• Opening up the QCD axion window
• Dynamics of oscillating scalar field in thermal environment
• The Imprint of Warm Dark Matter on the Cosmological 21-cm Signal
• Sensitivity of Next-Generation Tritium Beta-Decay Experiments for keV-Scale Sterile Neutrinos
• Prethermalization Production of Dark Matter
• QCD Axion Dark Matter with a Small Decay Constant
• New limits on dark photons from solar emission and keV scale dark matter
• Post-Inflationary Gravitino Production Revisited
• XENON1T excess from anomaly-free ALP dark matter and its implications for stellar cooling anomaly
• The ALP miracle revisited
• Exploring New Physics with O(keV) Electron Recoils in Direct Detection Experiments
• Nonequilibrium Dynamics of Scalar Fields in a Thermal Bath
• Dissipative Effects on Reheating after Inflation
• Cosmological abundance of the QCD axion coupled to hidden photons
• Isocurvature Constraints and Anharmonic Effects on QCD Axion Dark Matter
• Detecting Light Boson Dark Matter through Conversion into Magnon
• QCD Axion on Hilltop by a Phase Shift of $\pi$
• Dark Matter Production during the Thermalization Era
• Probing the Higgs Portal at the Fermilab Short-Baseline Neutrino Experiments
• ALP inflation and Big Bang on Earth
• Hidden Photon Dark Matter in the Light of XENON1T and Stellar Cooling
• Gravitational Production of Hidden Photon Dark Matter in Light of the XENON1T Excess
• Higgscitement: Cosmological Dynamics of Fine Tuning
• Wavelet Approach to Search for Sterile Neutrinos in Tritium $\beta$-Decay Spectra
• Big-bang nucleosynthesis with sub-GeV massive decaying particles
• Flooded Dark Matter and S Level Rise
• Constraining FIMP from the structure formation of the Universe: analytic mapping from $m_{\mathrm{WDM}}$
• Unitary inflaton as decaying dark matter
• Preheating after Small-Field Inflation
• Boosted Neutrinos and Relativistic Dark Particles as Messengers from Reheating
• Light Higgsino in Heavy Gravitino Scenario with Successful Electroweak Symmetry Breaking
• Axion Models with High Scale Inflation
• On bulk viscosity and moduli decay
• What if ALP dark matter for the XENON1T excess is the inflaton
• On the keV sterile neutrino search in electron capture
• Decay of Scalar Condensation in Quantum Field Theory
• Non-perturbative over-production of axion-like-particles (ALPs) via derivative interaction

Cited by in corpus (37)

• Ultraviolet Freeze-in with a Time-dependent Inflaton Decay
• Freeze-in from Preheating
• Scalar Dark Matter Production from Preheating and Structure Formation Constraints
• Dark Photon Dark Matter without Stueckelberg Mass
• Challenges for heavy QCD axion inflation
• Anisotropic cosmic optical background bound for decaying dark matter in light of the LORRI anomaly
• Search for dark-photon dark matter in the SuperMAG geomagnetic field dataset
• Strong CP problem and axion dark matter with small instantons
• Sensitivity of Space-based Gravitational-Wave Interferometers to Ultralight Bosonic Fields and Dark Matter
• Indirect Detection of eV Dark Matter via Infrared Spectroscopy
• Signatures of Ultralight Bosons in Compact Binary Inspiral and Outspiral
• Dark Matter Axions in the Early Universe with a Period of Increasing Temperature
• The Spectrum of Dark Radiation as a Probe of Reheating
• Thermal production of cold "hot dark matter" around eV
• Early dark energy by dark Higgs, and axion-induced non-thermal trapping
• Phenomenology of CP-even ALP
• Small cosmological constant from a peculiar inflaton potential
• Background-Induced Forces from Dark Relics
• Probing a light dark sector at future lepton colliders via invisible decays of the SM-like and dark Higgs bosons
• Momentum distribution of dark matter produced in inflaton decay: effect of inflaton mediated scatterings
• Hidden Dark Matter from Starobinsky Inflation
• Dissipation of oscillating scalar backgrounds in an FLRW universe
• Instability of the Electroweak Vacuum in Starobinsky Inflation
• Shining ALP Dark Radiation
• Lepton collider as a window to reheating via freezing in dark matter detection. Part I
• Misalignment production of vector boson dark matter from axion-SU(2) inflation
• Metastable Conformal Dark Matter
• Freezing-in Cannibal Dark Sectors
• Entropy Production in the Inflationary Epoch Using the Gouy-Stodola Theorem
• Chiral Gravitational Wave Background from Audible Axion via Nieh-Yan Term
• Hidden Photon and Axion Dark Matter from Symmetry Breaking
• Probing sterile neutrino dark matter in the PTOLEMY-like experiment
• Cosmological implications of inflaton-mediated dark and visible matter scatterings after reheating
• Non-Scaling Topological Defects and Gravitational Waves in Higgs Portal
• Early universe dynamics of PQ field with very small self-coupling and its implications for axion dark matter
• Cored Dark Matter halos in the Cosmic Neutrino Background
• Probing Bose-enhanced Inflaton Decay with Gravitational Waves