A novel way to determine the scale of inflation

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Published 6 February 2018 © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab
, , Citation Kari Enqvist et al JCAP02(2018)006 DOI 10.1088/1475-7516/2018/02/006

1475-7516/2018/02/006

Abstract

We show that in the Feebly Interacting Massive Particle (FIMP) model of Dark Matter (DM), one may express the inflationary energy scale H* as a function of three otherwise unrelated quantities, the DM isocurvature perturbation amplitude, its mass and its self-coupling constant, independently of the tensor-to-scalar ratio. The FIMP model assumes that there exists a real scalar particle that alone constitutes the DM content of the Universe and couples to the Standard Model via a Higgs portal. We consider carefully the various astrophysical, cosmological and model constraints, accounting also for variations in inflationary dynamics and the reheating history, to derive a robust estimate for H* that is confined to a relatively narrow range. We point out that, within the context of the FIMP DM model, one may thus determine H* reliably even in the absence of observable tensor perturbations.

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10.1088/1475-7516/2018/02/006