Particle Astrophysics Seminar: The Inflaton Portal to a Highly Decoupled EeV Scale Dark-Matter: Production Mechanism and Experimental Signatures

  • Feb. 3, 2020, 1:00 pm US/Central
  • Curia II
  • Lucien Heurtier, University of Arizona

In this talk, I will explore the possibility that the dark matter relic abundance is generated in a context where the inflaton is the only mediator between the visible and the hidden sectors of our Universe. I will present a model of highly-decoupled dark matter and show that involving the inflationary sector in the mechanism of dark-matter production leads to non-trivial, but extremely tight constraints on the parameter space, predicting a mass of dark matter at the EeV scale. I will thereafter show that if such a DM candidate decays into EW final states, it could be detectable on Earth by the ANITA collaboration and possibly explain the recently reported anomalous events.