Dark photon dark matter from a rolling inflaton
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemEditorial
Institute of Physics
Fecha
2021-03-22Referencia bibliográfica
Published version: Mar Bastero-Gil... [et al.], JCAP02(2022)015. [https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2022/02/015]
Patrocinador
Spanish Government PID2019-106087GB-C22; European Commission PID2019105943GB-I00; Junta de Andalucia FQM-101 A-FQM-211-UGR18 P18FR-4314; European Commission; PRIN project "Search for the Fundamental Laws and Constituents" 2015P5SBHT_002; Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics (MITP) of the Cluster of Excellence PRISMA+ 39083149 SOMM17/6104/UGRResumen
We study in detail a recently proposed mechanism for producing non-thermal dark photon dark matter at the end of inflation in the mass range mu eV less than or similar to m less than or similar to 10 TeV. A tachyonic instability induced by a rolling inflaton leads to the coherent production of dark (abelian) gauge bosons with a peak in the power spectrum corresponding to the Hubble scale at the end of inflation. As the Universe expands after inflation the dark photons redshift and, at some point in their cosmic evolution, they obtain a mass. We focus in particular on the case where the dark photons are relativistic at the time their mass is generated and examine the associated cosmic evolution to compute the relic abundance today. We also examine the late time power spectrum demonstrating explicitly that it preserves the peak generated at the end of inflation. We show that the peak corresponds to small physical scales today, l(today) similar to cm-100km, with large density fluctuations at l(today) leading to a clumpy nature for the dark photon dark matter. We also discuss potential phenomenology and future directions, briefly commenting on the non-relativistic case.