Gravitational Wave-Induced Freeze-In of Fermionic Dark Matter

Abstract

The minimal coupling of massless fermions to gravity does not allow for their gravitational production solely based on the expansion of the Universe. We argue that this changes in presence of realistic and potentially detectable stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds. We compute the resulting energy density of Weyl fermions at 1-loop using in--in formalism. If the initially massless fermions eventually acquire mass, this mechanism can explain the dark matter abundance in the Universe. Remarkably, it may be more efficient than conventional gravitational production of superheavy fermions.