Inflatable Dark Matter

Understand

We describe a general scenario, dubbed "Inflatable Dark Matter", in which the density of dark matter particles can be reduced through a short period of late-time inflation in the early universe.

• The overproduction of dark matter that is predicted within many otherwise well-motivated models of new physics can be elegantly remedied within this context, without the need to tune underlying parameters or to appeal to anthropic considerations.
• Thermal relics that would otherwise be disfavored can easily be accommodated within this class of scenarios, including dark matter candidates that are very heavy or very light.
• Furthermore, the non-thermal abundance of GUT or Planck scale axions can be brought to acceptable levels, without invoking anthropic tuning of initial conditions.