Generation of neutrino dark matter, baryon asymmetry, and radiation after quintessential inflation

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive model within quintessential inflation that explains dark matter, baryon asymmetry, and reheating by introducing hierarchical sterile neutrinos, a light scalar field, and Higgs field instabilities, unifying these phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework combining sterile neutrinos, scalar fields, and Higgs instabilities to simultaneously address dark matter, baryogenesis, and reheating in inflationary cosmology.

Findings

Dark matter candidate produced via Dodelson-Widrow mechanism

Baryon asymmetry generated by gravitational production of sterile neutrinos

Reheating achieved through Higgs field instabilities induced by non-minimal coupling

Abstract

We construct a model explaining dark matter, baryon asymmetry and reheating in quintessential inflation model. Three generations of right-handed neutrinos having hierarchical masses, and the light scalar field leading to self-interaction of active neutrinos are introduced. The lightest sterile neutrino is a dark matter candidate produced by a Dodelson-Widrow mechanism in the presence of a new light scalar field, while the heaviest and the next heaviest sterile neutrinos produced by gravitational particle production are responsible for the generation of the baryon asymmetry. Reheating is realized by spinodal instabilities of the Standard Model Higgs field induced by the non-minimal coupling to the scalar curvature, which can solve overproduction of gravitons and curvature perturbation created by the Higgs condensation.