TY - JOUR

T1 - Dark matter production and reheating via direct inflaton couplings: collective effects

AU - Lebedev, Oleg

AU - Smirnov, Fedor

AU - Solomko, Timofey

AU - Yoon, Jong-Hyun

PY - 2021/10/12

Y1 - 2021/10/12

N2 - We study scalar dark matter production and reheating via renormalizable inflaton couplings, which include both quartic and trilinear interactions. These processes often depend crucially on collective effects such as resonances, backreaction and rescattering of the produced particles. To take them into account, we perform lattice simulations and map out parameter space producing the correct (non-thermal) dark matter density. We find that the inflaton-dark matter system can reach a quasi-equilibrium state during preheating already at very small couplings, in which case the dark matter abundance becomes independent of the inflaton-dark matter coupling and is described by a universal formula. Dark matter is readily overproduced and even tiny values of the direct inflaton couplings can be sufficient to get the right composition of the Universe, which reaffirms their importance in cosmology.

AB - We study scalar dark matter production and reheating via renormalizable inflaton couplings, which include both quartic and trilinear interactions. These processes often depend crucially on collective effects such as resonances, backreaction and rescattering of the produced particles. To take them into account, we perform lattice simulations and map out parameter space producing the correct (non-thermal) dark matter density. We find that the inflaton-dark matter system can reach a quasi-equilibrium state during preheating already at very small couplings, in which case the dark matter abundance becomes independent of the inflaton-dark matter coupling and is described by a universal formula. Dark matter is readily overproduced and even tiny values of the direct inflaton couplings can be sufficient to get the right composition of the Universe, which reaffirms their importance in cosmology.

KW - dark matter simulations

KW - dark matter theory

KW - physics of the early universe

KW - LATTICE

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85117699965&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/33483699-d82a-3e61-a51f-0704da984fe7/

U2 - 10.1088/1475-7516/2021/10/032

DO - 10.1088/1475-7516/2021/10/032

M3 - Article

VL - 2021

JO - Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

JF - Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

SN - 1475-7516

IS - 10

M1 - 032

ER -