Gravitational dark matter production: Primordial black holes and UV freeze-in

Abstract

Dark matter (DM) interacting only gravitationally with the standard model could have been produced in the early universe by Hawking evaporation of primordial black holes (PBH). This mechanism is viable in a large range of DM mass, spanning up to the Planck scale. However, DM is also unavoidably produced by the irreducible UV gravitational freeze-in. We show that the latter mechanism sets strong bounds, excluding large regions of the parameter space favored by PBH production.