Challenges for Inflaton Dark Matter

Abstract

We examine an intriguing possibility that a single field is responsible for both inflation and dark matter, focussing on the minimal set-up where inflation is driven by a scalar coupling to curvature. We study in detail the reheating process in this framework, which amounts mainly to particle production in a quartic potential, and distinguish thermal and non-thermal dark matter options. In the non-thermal case, the reheating is impeded by backreaction and rescattering, making this possibility unrealistic. On the other hand, thermalized dark matter is viable, yet the unitarity bound forces the inflaton mass into a narrow window close to half the Higgs mass.

arXiv comment16 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Dark matter production via a non-minimal coupling to gravity
• Oscillating scalar dissipating in a medium
• Dark matter production and reheating via direct inflaton couplings: collective effects
• Dissipation of oscillating scalar backgrounds in an FLRW universe
• Massless Preheating and Electroweak Vacuum Metastability
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• Inflation and Dark Matter in the $Z_5$ Model
• Inflaton freeze-out
• On the Realization of WIMPflation
• On gravitational preheating