Speaker
Description
The persistent absence of non-gravitational dark matter signals has increased interest in candidates that interact extremely weakly with the Standard Model—if at all. (Non-perturbative) gravitational particle production provides an unavoidable mechanism for generating such dark matter via the expansion of spacetime. However, predicting the exact relic abundance is subject to significant theoretical uncertainties arising from the choice of inflationary potential, field spin, and the details of the reheating phase.
In this talk, I will present an estimation of these uncertainties based on recent results for scalar and vector spectator fields across different inflationary backgrounds. Furthermore, I explore the conceptual and technical challenges of reconciling this gravitational production—rooted in QFT in curved spacetimes—with the freeze-in mechanism, typical in astroparticle physics.
| Main Contribution topic | Theory / Phenomenology |
|---|---|
| Secondary contribution topic | Cosmology Dark Matter |