Off-shell dark matter: A cosmological relic of quantum gravity

Mehdi Saravani and Niayesh Afshordi
Phys. Rev. D 95, 043514 – Published 17 February 2017

Abstract

We study a novel proposal for the origin of cosmological cold dark matter (CDM) which is rooted in the quantum nature of spacetime. In this model, off-shell modes of quantum fields can exist in asymptotic states as a result of spacetime nonlocality (expected in generic theories of quantum gravity) and play the role of CDM, which we dub off-shell dark matter (OfDM). However, their rate of production is suppressed by the scale of nonlocality (e.g. Planck length). As a result, we show that OfDM is only produced in the first moments of big bang, and then effectively decouples (except through its gravitational interactions). We examine the observational predictions of this model: In the context of cosmic inflation, we show that this proposal relates the reheating temperature to the inflaton mass, which narrows down the uncertainty in the number of e-foldings of specific inflationary scenarios. We also demonstrate that OfDM is indeed cold, and discuss potentially observable signatures on small scale matter power spectrum.

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  • Received 21 November 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.95.043514

© 2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Gravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

Authors & Affiliations

Mehdi Saravani1,2,3,* and Niayesh Afshordi2,3,†

  • 1School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom
  • 2Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 31 Caroline St. N., Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada
  • 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada

  • *mehdi.saravani@nottingham.ac.uk
  • nafshordi@pitp.ca

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Issue

Vol. 95, Iss. 4 — 15 February 2017

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