Gravitational freeze-in dark matter from Higgs preheating

Abstract

Gravitational freeze-in is a mechanism to explain the observed dark matter relic density if dark matter neither couples to inflation nor to standard model sector.In this work we study gravitational freeze-in dark matter production during Higgs preheating based on non-perturbative resonance.Using reliable lattice method to handle this process,we show that tachyonic resonance is prohibited by strong back reaction due to Higgs self interaction needed to keep the positivity of potential during preheating,and parameter resonance is viable by tuning the Higgs self-interaction coupling to be small enough in ultraviolet energy scale.We then derive the dark matter relic density under the context of Higgs preheating,and uncover a new dark matter parameter space with dark matter mass larger than inflaton mass,which arises from out-of-equilibrium Higgs annihilation.Finally, we briefly remark the open question of testing gravitational dark matter.