Superheavy dark matter from thermal inflation

Abstract

It is quite plausible that the mass of the dark matter particle increases significantly after its freeze-out, due to a scalar field rolling to large values. We describe a realization of this scenario in the context of thermal inflation which naturally gives a cold dark matter particle with the correct cosmological abundance and a mass around ${10}^{10}\mathrm{GeV},$ evading the conventional upper bound of ${10}^{5}\mathrm{GeV}.$ We also discuss another realization which could produce a cosmologically interesting abundance of near Planck mass, possibly electromagnetically charged, particles. The detection and observational consequences of superheavy cold dark matter or wimpzillas are briefly examined.