Gravitational dark matter production from fermionic spectator fields during inflation
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arXiv
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| Hauptverfasser: | , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866909940736589824 |
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| author | Belfiglio, Alessio Luongo, Orlando |
| author_facet | Belfiglio, Alessio Luongo, Orlando |
| contents | We investigate the gravitational particle production from vacuum for a minimally coupled fermionic spectator field during a single-field inflationary phase. We observe that metric perturbations arising from the quantum fluctuations of a scalar inflaton field enhance gravitational production, showing that such a perturbative contribution becomes dominant if the field mass is sufficiently smaller than the inflationary Hubble rate. We focus on modes that leave the Hubble horizon during the latest stages of slow-roll and we numerically compute the total number of particles obtained from perturbations, providing a lower bound on the amount of such \enquote{geometric} particles for the case of Starobinsky inflation and a quadratic hilltop scenario. Our outcomes are compatible with the net observational cold dark matter abundance as experimentally measured, whose dark matter candidate exhibits mass in the range $10^5 \lesssim m \lesssim 10^7$ GeV, excluded by previous non-perturbative calculations. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_04219 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Gravitational dark matter production from fermionic spectator fields during inflation Belfiglio, Alessio Luongo, Orlando General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory We investigate the gravitational particle production from vacuum for a minimally coupled fermionic spectator field during a single-field inflationary phase. We observe that metric perturbations arising from the quantum fluctuations of a scalar inflaton field enhance gravitational production, showing that such a perturbative contribution becomes dominant if the field mass is sufficiently smaller than the inflationary Hubble rate. We focus on modes that leave the Hubble horizon during the latest stages of slow-roll and we numerically compute the total number of particles obtained from perturbations, providing a lower bound on the amount of such \enquote{geometric} particles for the case of Starobinsky inflation and a quadratic hilltop scenario. Our outcomes are compatible with the net observational cold dark matter abundance as experimentally measured, whose dark matter candidate exhibits mass in the range $10^5 \lesssim m \lesssim 10^7$ GeV, excluded by previous non-perturbative calculations. |
| title | Gravitational dark matter production from fermionic spectator fields during inflation |
| topic | General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.04219 |