Ultra-cold weakly interacting massive particles: relics of non-standard pre-big-bang-nucleosynthesis cosmologies

Journal Article · Wed Oct 15 00:00:00 EDT 2008 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2008/10/002· OSTI ID:22156760

Gelmini, Graciela B ^[1]; Gondolo, Paolo ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, 475 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (United States)
2. Department of Physics, University of Utah, 115 S 1400 E 201, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 (United States)

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) constitute one of very few probes of cosmology before big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). We point out that in scenarios in which the Universe evolves in a non-standard manner during and after WIMP kinetic decoupling, the horizon mass scale at decoupling can be smaller and the dark matter WIMPs can be colder than in standard cosmology. This would lead to much smaller first objects in hierarchical structure formation. In low reheating temperature scenarios the effect may be large enough to noticeably enhance indirect detection signals in GLAST and other detectors, by up to two orders of magnitude.

• OSTI ID: 22156760
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2008, Issue 10; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
COSMOLOGY
DECOUPLING
DETECTION
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
NUCLEOSYNTHESIS
PARTICLES
PROBES
SIGNALS
UNIVERSE
WEAK INTERACTIONS