Massive gravitons as dark matter and gravitational waves

Katsuki Aoki, Shinji Mukohyama

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    60 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    We consider the possibility that the massive graviton is a viable candidate for dark matter in the context of bimetric gravity. We first derive the energy-momentum tensor of the massive graviton and show that it indeed behaves as that of dark matter fluid. We then discuss a production mechanism and the present abundance of massive gravitons as dark matter. Since the metric to which ordinary matter fields couple is a linear combination of the two mass eigenstates of bigravity, production of massive gravitons, i.e., the dark matter particles, is inevitably accompanied by generation of massless gravitons, i.e., the gravitational waves. Therefore, in this scenario some information about dark matter in our Universe is encoded in gravitational waves. For instance, if LIGO detects gravitational waves generated by the preheating after inflation, then the massive graviton with the mass of ∼0.01 GeV is a candidate for dark matter.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number024001
    JournalPhysical Review D
    Volume94
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2016 Jul 1

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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