%0 Generic %1 kolb2023cosmological %A Kolb, Edward W. %A Ling, Siyang %A Long, Andrew J. %A Rosen, Rachel A. %D 2023 %K tifr %T Cosmological gravitational particle production of massive spin-2 particles %U http://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04390 %X The phenomenon of cosmological gravitational particle production (CGPP) is expected to occur during the period of inflation and the transition into a hot big bang cosmology. Particles may be produced even if they only couple directly to gravity, and so CGPP provides a natural explanation for the origin of dark matter. In this work we study the gravitational production of massive spin-2 particles assuming two different couplings to matter. We evaluate the full system of mode equations, including the helicity-0 modes, and by solving them numerically we calculate the spectrum and abundance of massive spin-2 particles that results from inflation on a hilltop potential. We conclude that CGPP might provide a viable mechanism for the generation of massive spin-2 particle dark matter during inflation, and we identify the favorable region of parameter space in terms of the spin-2 particle's mass and the reheating temperature. As a secondary product of our work, we identify the conditions under which such theories admit ghost or gradient instabilities, and we thereby derive a generalization of the Higuchi bound to Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) spacetimes.

@misc{kolb2023cosmological, abstract = {The phenomenon of cosmological gravitational particle production (CGPP) is expected to occur during the period of inflation and the transition into a hot big bang cosmology. Particles may be produced even if they only couple directly to gravity, and so CGPP provides a natural explanation for the origin of dark matter. In this work we study the gravitational production of massive spin-2 particles assuming two different couplings to matter. We evaluate the full system of mode equations, including the helicity-0 modes, and by solving them numerically we calculate the spectrum and abundance of massive spin-2 particles that results from inflation on a hilltop potential. We conclude that CGPP might provide a viable mechanism for the generation of massive spin-2 particle dark matter during inflation, and we identify the favorable region of parameter space in terms of the spin-2 particle's mass and the reheating temperature. As a secondary product of our work, we identify the conditions under which such theories admit ghost or gradient instabilities, and we thereby derive a generalization of the Higuchi bound to Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) spacetimes.}, added-at = {2023-02-10T04:44:43.000+0100}, author = {Kolb, Edward W. and Ling, Siyang and Long, Andrew J. and Rosen, Rachel A.}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/22a9cbbcb5032348547700b0656219bbf/citekhatri}, description = {Cosmological gravitational particle production of massive spin-2 particles}, interhash = {a3077740b7d5d4878a465200fdfd5948}, intrahash = {2a9cbbcb5032348547700b0656219bbf}, keywords = {tifr}, note = {cite arxiv:2302.04390Comment: 46 pages + references, 9 figures}, timestamp = {2023-02-10T04:44:43.000+0100}, title = {Cosmological gravitational particle production of massive spin-2 particles}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04390}, year = 2023 }