Speaker
Description
The production of dark relics from the decay of the primordial inflaton condensate must always be considered when building models of the very early Universe. Even in the absence of direct couplings, dark matter and radiation can be produced from the gravitational interaction between the dark and inflaton sectors. In this talk I will discuss the non-equilibrated production of scalar dark matter during inflation and (p)reheating in the weakly and strongly coupled regimes, combining perturbative (Boltzmann) and non-perturbative (Hartree/Lattice) approaches. For weak (strong) coupling I will present the corresponding phase space distributions and show how the relic abundance is dominantly populated during inflation (reheating). Relic abundance, reheating, and structure formation constraints from the observation of the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest will be presented and discussed in detail.
