On initial conditions for the Hot Big Bang

TL;DR

This paper investigates the reheating process after Higgs-driven inflation within the Standard Model and nuMSM, estimating the initial conditions for radiation dominance, and explores sterile neutrino production as dark matter candidates.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of reheating temperatures, initial conditions, and sterile neutrino production in Higgs-driven inflation models, including effects of higher dimensional operators.

Findings

Reheating temperature T_r is approximately (3-15)×10^{13} GeV.

Sterile neutrino concentrations at T_r are negligibly small in the minimal nuMSM.

Sterile neutrinos with mass exceeding 100 keV can be produced during reheating.

Abstract

We analyse the process of reheating the Universe in the electroweak theory where the Higgs field plays a role of the inflaton. We estimate the maximal temperature of the Universe and fix the initial conditions for radiation-dominated phase of the Universe expansion in the framework of the Standard Model (SM) and of the nuMSM -- the minimal extension of the SM by three right-handed singlet fermions. We show that the inflationary epoch is followed by a matter dominated stage related to the Higgs field oscillations. We investigate the energy transfer from Higgs-inflaton to the SM particles and show that the radiation dominated phase of the Universe expansion starts at temperature T_r~(3-15)*10^{13} GeV, where the upper bound depends on the Higgs boson mass. We estimate the production rate of singlet fermions at preheating and find that their concentrations at T_r are negligibly small. This suggests that the sterile neutrino Dark Matter (DM) production and baryogenesis in the nuMSM with Higgs-driven inflation are low energy phenomena, having nothing to do with inflation. We study then a modification of the nuMSM, adding to its Lagrangian higher dimensional operators suppressed by the Planck scale. The role of these operators in Higgs-driven inflation is clarified. We find that these operators do not contribute to the production of Warm Dark Matter (WDM) and to baryogenesis. We also demonstrate that the sterile neutrino with mass exceeding 100 keV (a Cold Dark Matter (CDM) candidate) can be created during the reheating stage of the Universe in necessary amounts. We argue that the mass of DM sterile neutrino should not exceed few MeV in order not to overclose the Universe.