Polynomial inflation and dark matter

Nicolás Bernal; Yong Xu

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09694-5

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Particles and Fields

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. C (2021) 81: 877
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09694-5

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Polynomial inflation and dark matter

Nicolás Bernal¹ and Yong Xu²^b

¹ Centro de Investigaciones, Universidad Antonio Nariño, Carrera 3 Este # 47A-15, Bogotá, Colombia
² Bethe Center for Theoretical Physics and Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 12, 53115, Bonn, Germany

^b yongxu@th.physik.uni-bonn.de

Received: 18 July 2021
Accepted: 28 September 2021
Published online: 6 October 2021

Abstract

We present a minimal UV complete framework to embed inflation and dark matter by extending the standard model with a singlet real scalar field (the inflaton) and a singlet fermionic field acting as dark matter. The inflaton features the most general renormalizable polynomial up to quartic order, which is flat due to the existence of a perturbed inflection-point, comfortably fitting CMB measurements. We also analyze (p)reheating by considering the Higgs production via inflaton decay. In the early universe, dark matter can be generated by the mediation of gravitons or inflatons. However, the production via the direct decay of the inflatons dominates, making viable a large range of dark matter masses, from $O (10^{- 5})$ ${\mathcal {O}}(10^{-5})$ GeV to $O (10^{11})$ ${\mathcal {O}}(10^{11})$ GeV.

© The Author(s) 2021

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