Primordial Perturbation of Dark Matter as a Novel Probe of Very Early Universe

TL;DR

This paper proposes that primordial dark matter perturbations can encode information about the very early universe, offering a new way to probe the reheating era through gravitational waves and their relation to inflation.

Contribution

It introduces a generic scenario for generating and analyzing primordial dark matter perturbations and derives a novel constraint on reheating from primordial gravitational waves.

Findings

Primordial dark matter perturbations can encode early universe information.

A new constraint on reheating process from primordial gravitational waves.

Explanation for the low observed primordial gravitational wave amplitude.

Abstract

Dark matter(DM) is the only possible candidate which would be apart from the thermal equilibrium before Big Bang nucleosynthesis(BBN) in accordance with current DM searches. In this work, we report a generic scenario that primordial perturbation of dark matter(PPDM) can be, effectively, generated and encoded with primordial information of very early universe up to the reheating era. We present an analytical solution of the whole evolution of PPDM. A novel and strong constraint on the reheating process imposed by primordial gravitational wave(PGW) is obtained for the first time. It indicates the ratio of PGW to primordial curvature perturbation(PCP) is not only dependent on the slow-roll spectral index but also, strongly, on the decay process of inflaton at reheating. For very generic reheating process, our result provides a natural explanation of the paucity of PGW in current observations.