Cosmology of hidden sector with Higgs portal

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, 2009.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-75).In this thesis, we are investigating cosmological implications of hidden sector models which involve scalar fields that do not interact with the Standard Model gauge interactions, but couple directly to the Higgs field. We particularly focus on their relic particle density as a candidate for dark matter. For the case of hidden sector without a gauge field we have improved the accuracy of the bounds on the coupling constant and give bounds on the Lagrangian parameters. Models with Abelian and non-Abelian gauge fields are also studied with relic density bounds, BBN and galactic dynamics constraints. Several discussions on phase transitions and alternative dark matter candidates are included.by Serkan Cabi.Ph.D