collaborators

7 papers

astro-ph.CO2026

Phenomenology of Inflaton-Driven Early QCD Confinement and Solution to Axion Isocurvature Problem

Evangelos I. Sfakianakis, Barmak Shams Es Haghi, Katherine Freese

We study the phenomenology of early QCD confinement during inflation, driven by a direct coupling between the inflaton and Standard Model gluons. This coupling dynamically raises t…

astro-ph.CO2026

Isocurvature-Free QCD Axion Dark Matter from Inflaton-Driven Early QCD: the Necessity of Inflationary Plateaus

Katherine Freese, Evangelos I. Sfakianakis, Barmak Shams Es Haghi

A direct coupling between the inflaton and Standard Model gluons can dynamically raise the QCD confinement scale during inflation, making the axion temporarily heavy and suppressin…

hep-ph2025

Probing High Reheating Temperatures by Direct Detection Experiments

Barmak Shams Es Haghi

We argue that the benchmark freeze in dark matter (DM) scenario for direct detection experiments, in which a DM candidate interacts with the Standard Model (SM) through an ultralig…

hep-ph2025

Thermal Gravitons from Warm Inflation

Gabriele Montefalcone, Barmak Shams Es Haghi, Tao Xu +1

In warm inflation (WI), the persistent thermal bath that is sustained by dissipative interactions with the inflaton field produces a stochastic background of gravitational waves (G…

hep-ph2025

Setting up stasis with gravitational interactions

Andrew J. Long, Barmak Shams Es Haghi, Moira Venegas

An epoch known as cosmological stasis may have taken place in the early Universe. During matter-radiation stasis, a population of non-relativistic particles with different masses g…

hep-ph2024

Indirect Detection of Hot Dark Matter

Jeff A. Dror, Pearl Sandick, Barmak Shams Es Haghi +1

Cosmologically stable, light particles that came into thermal contact with the Standard Model in the early universe may persist today as a form of hot dark matter. For relics with…