Dark matter production via a non-minimal coupling to gravity

Abstract

We study postinflationary scalar dark matter production via its non-minimal coupling to gravity. During the inflaton oscillation epoch, dark matter is produced resonantly for a sufficiently large non-minimal coupling $\xi\gtrsim 5$. We find that backreaction on the curvature and rescattering effects typically become important for the values of $\xi$ above $30$, which invalidate simple estimates of the production efficiency. At large couplings, the dark matter yield becomes almost independent of $\xi$, signifying approximate quasi-equilibrium in the inflaton-dark matter system. Although the analysis gets complicated by the presence of apparent negative energy in the Jordan frame, this behaviour can be regularized by introducing mild dark matter self-interaction. Using lattice simulations, we delineate parameter space leading to the correct dark matter relic abundance.