Dark matter from gravitational particle production at reheating

We show that curvature induced particle production at reheating generates adiabatic dark matter if there are non-minimally coupled spectator scalars weakly coupled to visible matter. The observed dark matter abundance implies an upper bound on spectator masses m and non-minimal coupling values ξ. For example, assuming quadratic inflation, instant reheating and a single spectator scalar with only gravitational couplings, the observed dark matter abundance is obtained for m ∼ 0.1 GeV and ξ ∼ 1. Larger mass and coupling values of the spectator are excluded as they would lead to overproduction of dark matter.