{"id":9752,"date":"2025-12-22T09:31:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T04:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.isical.ac.in\/~pamu\/?post_type=event&#038;p=9752"},"modified":"2026-01-08T14:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T09:10:15","slug":"scalaron-dark-matter-dynamics-and-the-role-of-higgs-non-minimal-coupling","status":"publish","type":"event","link":"https:\/\/oldweb.isical.ac.in\/~pamu\/event\/scalaron-dark-matter-dynamics-and-the-role-of-higgs-non-minimal-coupling\/","title":{"rendered":"Scalaron Dark Matter Dynamics and the Role of Higgs non-minimal Coupling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this talk, I will discuss how the scalar degree of freedom emerging in R<sup>2<\/sup>-gravity, namely the scalaron, can naturally serve as a viable dark matter (DM) candidate. The scalaron interacts only gravitationally with Standard Model fields through Planck-suppressed couplings, making it consistent with the current absence of DM detection beyond gravity. I will show how a non-minimal coupling of the Higgs field to gravity modifies the induced trilinear scalaron-Higgs interaction that governs the early-universe evolution of the scalaron. The interplay between the R<sup>2<\/sup>-gravity contribution and that from the non-minimal coupling determines both the initial conditions and evolution of the scalaron, leading to cold DM behavior at later epochs. Remarkably, depending on the strength of the non-minimal coupling, the scalaron mass can either lie in the meV range or within the keV-MeV window to yield the observed relic abundance, subject to additional constraints from collider and astrophysical observations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this talk, I will discuss how the scalar degree of freedom emerging in R2-gravity, namely the scalaron, can naturally serve as a viable dark matter (DM) candidate. The scalaron interacts only gravitationally with Standard Model fields through Planck-suppressed couplings, making it consistent with the current absence of DM detection beyond gravity. I will show [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[107],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldweb.isical.ac.in\/~pamu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/9752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldweb.isical.ac.in\/~pamu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldweb.isical.ac.in\/~pamu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/event"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldweb.isical.ac.in\/~pamu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/9752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9766,"href":"https:\/\/oldweb.isical.ac.in\/~pamu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/9752\/revisions\/9766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldweb.isical.ac.in\/~pamu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldweb.isical.ac.in\/~pamu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldweb.isical.ac.in\/~pamu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}