Light dark photon dark matter from inflation

Superheavy Dark Matter from Thermal Inflation

It is quite plausible that the mass of the dark matter particle increases significantly after its freeze-out, due to a scalar field rolling to large values. We describe a realization of this scenario in the context of thermal inflation which naturally gives a cold dark matter particle with the correct cosmological abundance and a mass around 10 GeV, evading the conventional upper bound of 10 Ge...

Bright Light from Dark Matter

Dark matter detectors as dark photon helioscopes.

Light new particles with masses below 10 keV, often considered as a plausible extension of the standard model, will be emitted from the solar interior and can be detected on Earth with a variety of experimental tools. Here, we analyze the new "dark" vector state V, a massive vector boson mixed with the photon via an angle κ, that in the limit of the small mass mV has its emission spectrum stron...

Dark matter chaotic inflation in light of BICEP2

We propose an economical model in which a singlet Z2-odd scalar field accounts for the primordial inflation and the present dark matter abundance simultaneously in the light of recent BICEP2 result. Interestingly, the reheating temperature and the thermal dark matter abundance are closely connected by the same interaction between the singlet scalar and the standard model Higgs. In addition, the...

Light Higgsino Dark Matter

We re–investigate the question whether a light higgsino–like neutralino is a viable Dark Matter candidate. To this end we compute the dominant one–loop corrections to the masses of the higgsino–like states in the minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), due to loops involving heavy quarks and their superpartners. We also calculate analogous corrections to the couplings of higgsino–like neu...