We calculate the production of a massive vector boson by quantum fluctuations during inflation. This gives a novel dark-matter production mechanism quite distinct from misalignment or thermal production. While scalars and tensors are typically produced with a nearly scale-invariant spectrum, surprisingly the vector is produced with a power spectrum peaked at intermediate wavelengths. Thus dangerous, long-wavelength, isocurvature perturbations are suppressed. Further, at long wavelengths the vector inherits the usual adiabatic, nearly scale-invariant perturbations of the inflaton, allowing it to be a good dark matter candidate. The final abundance can be calculated precisely from the mass and the Hubble scale of inflation, H_I. Saturating the dark matter abundance we find a prediction for the mass m = 10^-5 eV (10^14 GeV/H_I)^4. High-scale inflation, potentially observable in the CMB, motivates an exciting mass range for recently proposed direct detection experiments for hidden photon dark matter. Such experiments may be able to reconstruct the distinctive, peaked power spectrum, verifying that the dark matter was produced by quantum fluctuations during inflation and providing a direct measurement of the scale of inflation. Thus a detection would not only be the discovery of dark matter, it would also provide an unexpected probe of inflation itself.
We perform a systematic analysis of dark matter production during post-inflationary reheating. Following the period of exponential expansion, the inflaton begins a period of damped oscillations as it decays. These oscillations and the evolution of temperature of the thermalized decay products depend on the shape of the inflaton potential $V(Φ)$. We consider potentials of the form $Φ^k$. Standard matter-dominated oscillations occur for $k=2$. In general, the production of dark matter may depend on either (or both) the maximum temperature after inflation, or the reheating temperature, where the …
Finite-duration non-slow-roll effects in inflationary production of ultralight vector dark matter
Zhejiang Normal University（浙江师范大学）；Khazar University（哈扎尔大学）；Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS)（俾路支信息技术、工程和管理科学大学）；Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学）；Kimyo International University in Tashkent（塔什干金约国际大学）；National University of Uzbekistan（乌兹别克斯坦国立大学）；University of Tashkent for Applied Sciences（塔什干应用科学大学）
We study the future prospects of the 21cm forest observations on the axion-like dark matter when the spontaneous breaking of the global Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry occurs after the inflation. The large isocurvature perturbations of order unity sourced from axion-like particles can result in the enhancement of minihalo formation, and the subsequent hierarchical structure formation can affect the minihalo abundance whose masses can exceed ${\cal O}(10^4) M_{\odot}$ relevant for the 21cm forest observations. We show that the 21cm forest observations are capable of probing the axion-like particle m…
Dark matter may only interact with the visible sector efficiently at energy scales above the inflaton mass, such as the Planck scale or the grand unification scale. In such a scenario, the dark matter is mainly produced out of equilibrium during the period of reheating, often referred to as UV freeze-in. We evaluate the abundance of the dark matter generated from bremsstrahlung off the inflaton decay products assuming no direct coupling between the inflaton and the dark matter. This process generally dominates the production of dark matter for low reheating temperatures where the production th…
Imprint of entanglement entropy in the power spectrum of inflationary fluctuations
如果暴胀子耦合到填充后暴胀阶段的其他自由度，则这种耦合修改暴胀子\emph{during}暴胀的动力学。我们认为轻费米子汤川耦合到暴胀子作为“不可观测”的自由度集成的总密度矩阵。追踪这些自由度产生一个\emph{mixed}密度矩阵，其时间演化由有效场论描述。我们表明，耦合导致丰富的费米子对生产的超哈勃暴胀子波动，导致\emph{growth of entanglement entropy during inflation}。暴胀子涨落的功率谱特征在于尺度不变性违反$\mathcal{P}(k) = \mathcal{P}_0(k)\,\,\exp\{8\,ξ_k\}$，并对\emph{index and its running directly correlated with the entanglement entropy}进行了修正：$S_{vN} = - \sum_{k} \Big[ \ln(1-ξ_k) + \frac{ξ_k\,\ln(ξ_k)}{1-ξ_k} \Big]$。对于超哈勃起伏，我们发现$ξ_k = -\frac{Y^2}{48π^2}\Big\{2\,N_T\,\ln(k/k_f) + \ln^2(k/k_f)\Big\}$与$Y$汤川耦合，$N_T$的e-折叠的总数在通货膨胀期间，和$k_f$的“枢轴”规模对应的模式，在通货膨胀结束时穿过哈勃半径。
Light new vector bosons can be produced gravitationally through quantum fluctuations during inflation; if these particles are feebly coupled and cosmologically metastable, they can account for the observed dark matter abundance. However, in minimal anomaly free $U(1)$ extensions to the Standard Model, these vectors generically decay to neutrinos if at least one neutrino mass eigenstate is sufficiently light. If these decays occur between neutrino decoupling and CMB freeze out, the resulting radiation energy density can contribute to $ΔN_{\rm eff}$ at levels that can ameliorate the Hubble tensi…
