2024/10/14 by Paulo B. Ferraz, João G. Rosa, Ferraz, Paulo B. +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2410.10996
openalex publication_date 2024/10/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We propose an inflation scenario with three independent stages of cold, warm and thermal inflation, respectively, driven by different scalar fields, motivated by the large number of such fields predicted in most extensions of the Standard Model. We show, in particular, that the intermediate period of warm inflation naturally leads to large density fluctuations on small scales, which can lead to primordial black hole formation in the mass window where they may account for all dark matter. This type of scenario yields a distinctive primordial black hole mass function with a mass gap, with the final period of thermal inflation diluting the abundance of very light black holes.