Smooth reheating and dark matter via non-Abelian gauge theory

Abstract: We demonstrate how a dark sector can provide a crucial link between a vacuum-dominated early universe and the later radiation-dominated epoch. As an example, we consider a feeble axion-like coupling of dark non-Abelian gauge fields with a single inflaton. In this scenario, a dark heat bath emerges at the end of inflation. As the dark sector cools down, its gauge fields confine into composite glueball states. The reheating of the visible sector is realized through portal interactions. After confinement, discrete symmetries protect part of the glueball states that form relic dark matter, while the others keep decaying into Standard Model degrees of freedom. The dark relic abundance depends mostly on the departure from equilibrium dynamics after the phase transition, constraining the confinement scale of the dark sector. Moreover, indirect detection and Big-Bang nucleosynthesis set bounds on the scale of portal interactions. We show that in a narrow but non-vanishing region of the parameter space, the correct dark matter abundance and sufficient reheating temperature are simultaneously reached.