Search

We study dark matter production from mediator decays in scenarios with an epoch of early matter domination. Particles that mediate interactions between dark matter and the standard model particles are kinematically accessible to the thermal bath as long as their mass is below the reheating temperature of the Universe after inflation. Decay of on-shell mediators can then lead to copious production of dark matter during early matter domination or a preceding radiation-dominated phase. In particular, for mediators that are charged under the standard model, it can exceed the standard freeze-in channel due to inverse annihilations at much lower temperatures (often by many orders of magnitude). The requirement to obtain the correct relic abundance severely constrains the parameter space for dark matter masses above a few TeV., Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures; published version

We know that space and time are treated almost equally in classical physics, but we also know that this is not the case for quantum mechanics. A quantum description of both space and time is important to really understand the quantum nature of reality. The Page-Wootters mechanism of quantum time is a promising starting point, according to which the evolution of the quantum system is described by the entanglement between it and quantum temporal degrees of freedom. In this paper, we consider a qubit clock that is entangled with a quantum system due to the Wigner rotation induced by Lorentz transformation. We study how this time-system entanglement depends on the rapidity of the Lorentz boost. We consider the case of a spin-1/2 particle with Gaussian momentum distribution as a concrete example. We also compare the time-system entanglement entropy with the spin-momentum entanglement entropy and find that the former is smaller than the latter., Comment: 7 pages + 7 figures; published version

If we interpret the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the Hubble horizon as thermodynamic entropy, then the entanglement entropy of the superhorizon modes of curvature perturbation entangled with the subhorizon modes will exceed the Bekenstein-Hawking bound at some point; we call this the unitary paradox of cosmological perturbations by analogy with black hole. In order to avoid a fine-tuned problem, the paradox must occur during the inflationary era at the critical time $t_c=\ln(3\sqrt{\pi}/\sqrt{2}\epsilon_HH_{inf})/2H_{inf}$ (in Planck units), where $\epsilon_H= -\dot{H}/H^2$ is the first Hubble slow-roll parameter and $H_{inf}$ is the Hubble rate during inflation. If we instead accept the fine-tuned problem, then the paradox will occur during the dark energy era at the critical time $t_c'=\ln(3\sqrt{\pi}H_{inf}/\sqrt{2}fe^{2N}H_\Lambda^2)/2H_\Lambda$, where $H_\Lambda$ is the Hubble rate dominated by dark energy, $N$ is the total number of e-folds of inflation, and $f$ is a purification factor that takes the range $0

Shaft inflation is a model in which the inflaton potential approaches a plateau far from the origin, while it resembles chaotic inflation near the origin. Meanwhile, the Randall-Sundrum type II model (RSII) is an interesting extra-dimensional model to study cosmological phenomenology. In this paper, we study shaft inflation in the RSII model. We find that the predictions are in excellent agreement with observation. The fundamental five-dimensional Planck scale is found to be $M_5\simeq 10^{16}$ GeV, which is consistent with the lower bound $M_5\gtrsim 10^{9}$ GeV obtained from experimental Newtonian gravitational bound. This is an important result that can be used to explore further the implications of extra dimension in other contexts., Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables; published version in JCAP

We present a minimal extension of the standard model that includes a long-lived fermion with weak-scale mass and an ${\cal O}({\rm GeV})$ fermionic dark matter candidate both of which are coupled to quarks. Decays of a TeV-scale colored scalar in a radiation-dominated phase bring the former to a thermal abundance while also producing dark matter. The long-lived fermion then dominates the energy density of the Universe and drives a period of early matter domination. It decays to reheat the Universe, mainly through baryon-number-violating interactions that also generate a baryon asymmetry, with a small branching fraction to dark matter. We find the allowed parameter space of the model and show that it can be probed by proposed long-lived particle searches as well as next-generation neutron-antineutron oscillation experiments. This model provides a robust explanation of dark matter and baryogenesis as long as the Universe is in a radiation-dominated phase at $T \gtrsim {\cal O}({\rm TeV})$., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures; updated to match published version