Dark photon dark matter from charged inflaton

Understand

We present a scenario of vector dark matter production during inflation containing a complex inflaton field which is charged under a dark gauge field and which has a symmetry breaking potential.

• As the inflaton field rolls towards the global minimum of the potential the dark photons become massive with a mass which can be larger than the Hubble scale during inflation.
• The accumulated energy of the quantum fluctuations of the produced dark photons gives the observed relic density of the dark matter for a wide range of parameters.
• Depending on the parameters, either the transverse modes or the longitudinal mode or their combination can generate the observed dark matter relic energy density.