0000000000344994
AUTHOR
Tommi Tenkanen
The First Three Seconds: a Review of Possible Expansion Histories of the Early Universe
It is commonly assumed that the energy density of the Universe was dominated by radiation between reheating after inflation and the onset of matter domination 54,000 years later. While the abundance of light elements indicates that the Universe was radiation dominated during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), there is scant evidence that the Universe was radiation dominated prior to BBN. It is therefore possible that the cosmological history was more complicated, with deviations from the standard radiation domination during the earliest epochs. Indeed, several interesting proposals regarding various topics such as the generation of dark matter, matter-antimatter asymmetry, gravitational waves,…
Observational properties of feebly coupled dark matter
We show that decoupled hidden sectors can have observational consequences. As a representative model example, we study dark matter production in the Higgs portal model with one real singlet scalar $s$ coupled to the Standard Model Higgs via $\lambda_{\rm hs}\Phi^\dagger\Phi s^2$ and demonstrate how the combination of non-observation of cosmological isocurvature perturbations and astrophysical limits on dark matter self-interactions imply stringent bounds on the magnitude of the scalar self-coupling $\lambda_{\rm s}s^4$. For example, for dark matter mass $m_{\rm s}=10$ MeV and Hubble scale during cosmic inflation $H_*=10^{12}$ GeV, we find $10^{-4}\lesssim \lambda_{\rm s}\lesssim 0.2$.
Reheating the Standard Model from a hidden sector
We consider a scenario where the inflaton decays to a hidden sector thermally decoupled from the visible Standard Model sector. A tiny portal coupling between the hidden and the visible sectors later heats the visible sector so that the Standard Model degrees of freedom come to dominate the energy density of the Universe before Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. We find that this scenario is viable, although obtaining the correct dark matter abundance and retaining successful Big Bang Nucleosynthesis is not obvious. We also show that the isocurvature perturbations constituted by a primordial Higgs condensate are not problematic for the viability of the scenario.
A strong electroweak phase transition from the inflaton field
We study a singlet scalar extension of the Standard Model. The singlet scalar is coupled non-minimally to gravity and assumed to drive inflation, and also couple sufficiently strongly with the SM Higgs field in order to provide for a strong first order electroweak phase transition. Requiring the model to describe inflation successfully, be compatible with the LHC data, and yield a strong first order electroweak phase transition, we identify the regions of the parameter space where the model is viable. We also include a singlet fermion with scalar coupling to the singlet scalar to probe the sensitivity of the constraints on additional degrees of freedom and their couplings in the singlet sec…
Observational constraints on decoupled hidden sectors
We consider an extension of the Standard Model with a singlet sector consisting of a real (pseudo)scalar and a Dirac fermion coupled with the Standard Model only via the scalar portal. We assume that the portal coupling is weak enough for the singlet sector not to thermalize with the Standard Model allowing the production of singlet particles via the freeze-in mechanism. If the singlet sector interacts with itself sufficiently strongly, it may thermalize within itself, resulting in dark matter abundance determined by the freeze-out mechanism operating within the singlet sector. We investigate this scenario in detail. In particular, we show that requiring the absence of inflationary isocurva…
Isocurvature Constraints on Portal Couplings
We consider portal models which are ultraweakly coupled with the Standard Model, and confront them with observational constraints on dark matter abundance and isocurvature perturbations. We assume the hidden sector to contain a real singlet scalar $s$ and a sterile neutrino $\psi$ coupled to $s$ via a pseudoscalar Yukawa term. During inflation, a primordial condensate consisting of the singlet scalar $s$ is generated, and its contribution to the isocurvature perturbations is imprinted onto the dark matter abundance. We compute the total dark matter abundance including the contributions from condensate decay and nonthermal production from the Standard Model sector. We then use the Planck lim…
Inflationary Imprints on Dark Matter
We show that dark matter abundance and the inflationary scale $H$ could be intimately related. Standard Model extensions with Higgs mediated couplings to new physics typically contain extra scalars displaced from vacuum during inflation. If their coupling to Standard Model is weak, they will not thermalize and may easily constitute too much dark matter reminiscent to the moduli problem. As an example we consider Standard Model extended by a $Z_2$ symmetric singlet $s$ coupled to the Standard Model Higgs $\Phi$ via $\lambda \Phi^{\dag}\Phi s^2$. Dark matter relic density is generated non-thermally for $\lambda \lesssim 10^{-7}$. We show that the dark matter yield crucially depends on the inf…