Higgs portal to inflation and fermionic dark matter

Abstract

We investigate an inflationary model involving a gauge singlet scalar and fermionic dark matter. The mixing between the singlet scalar and the Higgs boson provides a portal to dark matter. The inflaton could either be the Higgs boson or the singlet scalar, and slow roll inflation is realized via its nonminimal coupling to gravity. In this setup, the effective scalar potential is stabilized by the mixing between two scalars and coupling with dark matter. We study constraints from collider searches, relic density and direct detection, and find that dark matter mass should be around half the mass of either the Higgs boson or singlet scalar. Using the renormalization group equation improved scalar potential and putting all the constraints together, we show that the inflationary observables ${n}_{s}\ensuremath{-}r$ are consistent with current Planck data.