Fingerprints of freeze-in dark matter in an early matter-dominated era

Banerjee, Avik; Chowdhury, Debtosh

doi:10.21468/scipostphys.13.2.022

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 110 publications

(132 reference statements)

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“…When studying the testability of our non-thermal DM production mechanism, we used a simple Higgs-Portal set-up and a fermionic DM particle. However, we insist on the fact that our prescription to search for complementary probes of new physics with laboratory and Gravitational Wave experiments is very general and can be applied to many other DM scenarios that involve a non-standard cosmology [11,25,80,[190][191][192][193][194]. Following this prescription, we believe that many realizations of non-thermal DM production in the early universe may lead to unique predictions of GW spectral shapes that can be detected in future GW experiments and searched for experimentally in laboratories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signatures of non-thermal dark matter with kination and early matter domination. Gravitational waves versus laboratory searches

Ghoshal

Heurtier

Paul

2022

J. High Energ. Phys.

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The non-thermal production of dark matter (DM) usually requires very tiny couplings of the dark sector with the visible sector and therefore is notoriously challenging to hunt in laboratory experiments. Here we propose a novel pathway to test such a production in the context of a non-standard cosmological history, using both gravitational wave (GW) and laboratory searches. We investigate the formation of DM from the decay of a scalar field that we dub as the reheaton, as it also reheats the Universe when it decays. We consider the possibility that the Universe undergoes a phase with kination-like stiff equation-of-state (wkin> 1/3) before the reheaton dominates the energy density of the Universe and eventually decays into Standard Model and DM particles. We then study how first-order tensor perturbations generated during inflation, the amplitude of which may get amplified during the kination era and lead to detectable GW signals. Demanding that the reheaton produces the observed DM relic density, we show that the reheaton’s lifetime and branching fractions are dictated by the cosmological scenario. In particular, we show that it is long-lived and can be searched by various experiments such as DUNE, FASER, FASER-II, MATHUSLA, SHiP, etc. We also identify the parameter space which leads to complementary observables for GW detectors such as LISA and u-DECIGO. In particular we find that a kination-like period with an equation-of-state parameter wkin ≈ 0.5 and a reheaton mass $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (0.5–5) GeV and a DM mass of $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (10–100) keV may lead to sizeable imprints in both kinds of searches.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signatures of non-thermal dark matter with kination and early matter domination. Gravitational waves versus laboratory searches

Ghoshal

Heurtier

Paul

2022

J. High Energ. Phys.

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“…The inflation scale Λ can be limited by the amplitude of the scalar perturbations, A s , and the spectral tilt n s from inflationary observables of the CMB. Planck 2018 data [40] sets the upper limit Λ 1.4 × 10 16 GeV, see appendix A. Furthermore, the current upper bound on the tensor to scalar power spectrum ratio, r 0.032, limits the value of the α parameter or M from above, such that, M 10M Pl .…”

Section: Jhep02(2023)196 2 the Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We notice that this nontrivial Higgs mass leads to the suppression of perturbative decays of the inflaton field to Higgs boson pairs, which not only leads to elongations of the reheating period but also suppresses the production of the SM radiation energy density. As a result, evolution of the temperature of the SM bath is modified, which in turn can significantly affect the freeze-in production of dark matter (DM) during the reheating phase, see also [13][14][15][16]. The reheating dynamics due to this non-trivial φ-dependent Higgs mass is referred to as the massive reheating scenario, whereas for a comparison we consider the case where such mass effects are neglected, hence referred to as the massless reheating scenario.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higgs boson induced reheating and ultraviolet frozen-in dark matter

Ahmed

Grza̧dkowski

Socha

2023

J. High Energ. Phys.

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A reheating phase in the early universe is an essential part of all inflationary models during which not only the Standard Model (SM) quanta are produced but it can also shed light on the production of dark matter. In this work, we explore a class of reheating models where the reheating is induced by a cubic interaction of the inflaton ϕ to the SM Higgs boson h of the form ghϕMPlϕ|h|2 adopting the α-attractor T-model of inflation. Assuming inflaton as a background field such interaction implies a ϕ-dependent mass term of the Higgs boson and a non-trivial phase-space suppression of the reheating efficiency. As a consequence, the reheating is prolonged and the maximal temperature of the SM thermal bath is reduced. In particular, due to oscillations of the inflaton field the ϕ-dependent Higgs boson mass results in periodic transitions between phases of broken and unbroken electroweak gauge symmetry. The consequences of these rapid phase transitions have been studied in detail. A purely gravitational reheating mechanism in the presence of the inflaton background, i.e., for ghϕ = 0, has also been investigated. It turned out that even though it may account for the total production of SM radiation in the absence of ghϕ, its contribution to the reheating is subdominant for the range of ghϕ considered in this work. Approximate analytical solutions of Boltzmann equations for energy densities of the inflaton and SM radiation have been obtained. As a dark matter candidate a massive Abelian vector boson, Xμ, has been considered. Various production mechanisms of Xμ have been discussed including (i) purely gravitational production from the inflaton background, (ii) gravitational freeze-in from the SM quanta, (iii) inflaton decay through a dim-5 effective operator, and (iv) Higgs portal freeze-in and Higgs decay through a dim-6 effective operator. Parameters that properly describe the observed relic abundance have been determined.

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“…It is generally assumed that the temperature of the Universe always decreases in such phases; however, as shown in Refs. [25,26,55,56] there are well-motivated scenarios in which the temperature can remain constant or even increase for an extended period of time. This allows the thermal background to pass through the same temperature multiple times, with different values of the Hubble expansion rate.…”

Section: Nonstandard Cosmology With a Time-dependent Decay Widthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such periods are naturally motivated by string theory and supersymmetry, where extra-light fields are abundant and can eventually dominate the energy density in the Universe. Without loss of generality, we parameterize the dissipation rate of φ as Γ(R, T ) ∝ R k T n , R being the scale factor and T the photon temperature [25,26]. Note that the conventional result with constant Γ corresponds to the case where n = k = 0; however, in general one may expect a varying decay rate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dark Matter Axions in the Early Universe with a Period of Increasing Temperature

Arias¹,

Bernal²,

Osiński³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We consider the production of axion dark matter through the misalignment mechanism in the context of a nonstandard cosmological history involving early matter domination by a scalar field with a time-dependent decay rate. In cases where the temperature of the Universe experiences a temporary period of increase, Hubble friction can be restored in the evolution of the axion field, resulting in the possibility of up to three "crossings" of the axion mass and the Hubble expansion rate. This has the effect of dynamically resetting the misalignment mechanism to a new initial state for a second distinct phase of oscillation. The resultant axion mass required for the present dark matter relic density is never bigger than the standard-history window and can be smaller by more than three orders of magnitude, which can be probed by upcoming experiments such as ABRACADABRA, KLASH, ADMX, MADMAX, and ORGAN, targeting the axion-photon coupling. This highlights the possibility of exploring the cosmological history prior to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis through searches for axion dark matter beyond the standard window.

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Fingerprints of freeze-in dark matter in an early matter-dominated era

Cited by 13 publications

References 110 publications

Signatures of non-thermal dark matter with kination and early matter domination. Gravitational waves versus laboratory searches

Signatures of non-thermal dark matter with kination and early matter domination. Gravitational waves versus laboratory searches

Higgs boson induced reheating and ultraviolet frozen-in dark matter

Dark Matter Axions in the Early Universe with a Period of Increasing Temperature

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