Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Gravitational dark matter production in Palatini preheating
AU - Karam, Alexandros
AU - Raidal, Martti
AU - Tomberg, Eemeli
PY - 2021/3/19
Y1 - 2021/3/19
N2 - We study preheating in plateau inflation in the Palatini formulation of general relativity, in a special case that resembles Higgs inflation. It was previously shown that the oscillating inflaton field returns to the plateau repeatedly in this model, and this leads to tachyonic production of inflaton particles. We show that a minimally coupled spectator scalar field can be produced even more efficiently by a similar mechanism. The mechanism is purely gravitational, and the scalar field mass can be of order 1013 GeV, larger than the Hubble scale by many orders of magnitude, making this a candidate for superheavy dark matter.
AB - We study preheating in plateau inflation in the Palatini formulation of general relativity, in a special case that resembles Higgs inflation. It was previously shown that the oscillating inflaton field returns to the plateau repeatedly in this model, and this leads to tachyonic production of inflaton particles. We show that a minimally coupled spectator scalar field can be produced even more efficiently by a similar mechanism. The mechanism is purely gravitational, and the scalar field mass can be of order 1013 GeV, larger than the Hubble scale by many orders of magnitude, making this a candidate for superheavy dark matter.
KW - dark matter theory
KW - inflation
KW - modified gravity
KW - particle physics-cosmology connection
U2 - 10.1088/1475-7516/2021/03/064
DO - 10.1088/1475-7516/2021/03/064
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85103612984
VL - 2021
JO - Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
JF - Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
SN - 1475-7516
IS - 3
M1 - 064
ER -