Imprints of MeV Scale Hidden Dark Sector at Planck Data

Abstract

New light species can contribute to the number of effective relativistic degrees of freedom ($N_{\rm eff}$) at Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) which is precisely measured by Planck. In this work, we consider an MeV scale thermally decoupled non-minimal dark sector and study the imprint of the dark sector dynamics on the measurement of $N_{\rm eff}$ at the time of CMB formation. We have predicted the allowed region of model parameter space in the light of constraints arising from the measurements of both $N_{\rm eff}$ and dark matter relic density by Planck. It turns out that the impact of the dark sector dynamics on $N_{\rm eff}$ is significant in case of a non-hierarchical mass spectrum of the dark sector particles.