Super-Heavy Dark Matter - Towards Predictive Scenarios from Inflation

TL;DR

This paper explores the possibility that super-heavy dark matter, heavier than the inflaton, can be naturally produced through gravitational interactions during inflation, linking dark matter properties to inflationary observables.

Contribution

It introduces a framework where super-heavy dark matter arises from inflaton dynamics and gravitational interactions, providing testable predictions via CMB measurements.

Findings

Super-heavy dark matter can be produced naturally during inflation.

Certain inflationary models predict detectable signatures in CMB.

Parameter spaces for super-heavy dark matter are constrained by future observations.

Abstract

A generic prediction of the Coleman-Weinberg inflation is the existence of a heavy particle sector whose interactions with the inflaton, the lightest state in this sector, generate the inflaton potential at loop level. For typical interactions the heavy sector may contain stable states whose relic abundance is generated at the end of inflation by the gravity alone. This general feature, and the absence of any particle physics signal of dark matter so far, motivates us to look for new directions in the dark sector physics, including scenarios in which dark matter is super-heavy. In this article we study the possibility that the dark matter is even heavier than the inflaton, its existence follows from the inflaton dynamics, and its abundance today is {\it naturally} determined by the weakness of gravitational interaction. This implies that the super-heavy dark matter scenarios can be tested via the measurements of inflationary parameters and/or the CMB isocurvature perturbations and non-Gaussianities. We explicitly work out details of three Coleman-Weinberg inflation scenarios, study the systematics of super-heavy dark matter production in those cases, and compute which parts of the parameter spaces can be probed by the future CMB measurements.