Super heavy dark matter from inflationary Schwinger production

We consider a simple setup with a dark sector containing dark electrons charged under an abelian $U(1)_D$ gauge symmetry. We show that if the massless dark photon associated to the $U(1)_D$ is produced during inflation in such a way as to form a classical dark electric field, then dark electron-positron pairs are also produced close to the end of inflation via the Schwinger mechanism. Their mass is larger than the Hubble scale so they are non-relativistic at production and remain so for the rest of their cosmic evolution following reheating. They can account for the dark matter abundance today in scenarios with a high scale of inflation and efficient reheating.This points to a very heavy mass for the dark electrons of order $10^{14}$ GeV. Even with a dark gauge coupling comparable to the visible one of electromagnetism, the dark electrons are so heavy that they do not thermalize with the dark photons throughout their cosmic history. Assuming negligible kinetic mixing with the visible $U(1)$ the dark electrons remain decoupled from the Standard Model thermal bath as well.