Near-inflection point inflation and production of dark matter during reheating

TL;DR

This paper investigates slow roll single field inflation with polynomial potentials, analyzing dark matter production during reheating, constrained by current CMB data, and explores the parameter space for dark matter coupling and mass.

Contribution

It introduces two polynomial inflation models, constrains their parameters using CMB data, and examines dark matter production during reheating within these models.

Findings

Allowed parameter space for dark matter coupling and mass identified.

Constraints from CMB data limit inflationary potential parameters.

Dark matter production during reheating compatible with cosmological observations.

Abstract

We study slow roll single field inflationary scenario and the production of non-thermal fermionic dark matter, together with standard model Higgs, during reheating. For the inflationary scenario, we have considered two models of polynomial potential - one is symmetric about the origin and another one is not. We fix the coefficients of the potential from the current Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data from Planck/Bicep. Next, we explore the allowed parameter space on the coupling $(y_\chi)$ with inflaton and mass $(m_\chi)$ of dark matter (DM) particles $(\chi)$ produced during reheating and satisfying CMB and several other cosmological constraints.