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arXiv · 1902.08623

Making dark matter out of light: freeze-in from plasma effects

Cora Dvorkin·Tongyan Lin·Katelin Schutz
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Abstract

Dark matter (DM) could couple to particles in the Standard Model (SM) through a light vector mediator. In the limit of small coupling, this portal could be responsible for producing the observed DM abundance through a mechanism known as freeze-in. Furthermore, the requisite DM-SM couplings provide a concrete benchmark for direct and indirect searches for DM. In this paper, we present updated calculations of the relic abundance for DM produced by freeze-in through a light vector mediator. We identify an additional production channel: the decay of photons that acquire an in-medium plasma mass. These plasmon decays are a dominant channel for DM production for sub-MeV DM masses, and including this channel leads to a significant reduction in the predicted signal strength for DM searches. Accounting for production from both plasmon decays and annihilations of SM fermions, the DM acquires a highly non-thermal phase space distribution which impacts the cosmology at later times; these cosmological effects will be explored in a companion paper.

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Cora Dvorkin, Tongyan Lin, Katelin Schutz. 2019-02-22. Making dark matter out of light: freeze-in from plasma effects. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.99.115009

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