Abstract
We study a novel dark matter production mechanism based on the freeze-in through semi-production, i.e. the inverse semi-annihilation processes. A peculiar feature of this scenario is that the production rate is suppressed by a small initial abundance of dark matter and consequently creating the observed abundance requires much larger coupling values than for the usual freeze-in. We provide a concrete example model exhibiting such production mechanism and study it in detail, extending the standard formalism to include the evolution of dark matter temperature alongside its number density and discuss the importance of this improved treatment. Finally, we confront the relic density constraint with the limits and prospects for the dark matter indirect detection searches. We show that, even if it was never in full thermal equilibrium in the early Universe, dark matter could, nevertheless, have strong enough present-day annihilation cross section to lead to observable signals.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Planck collaboration, Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters, Astron. Astrophys. 641 (2020) A6 [arXiv:1807.06209] [INSPIRE].
B.W. Lee and S. Weinberg, Cosmological Lower Bound on Heavy Neutrino Masses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 39 (1977) 165 [INSPIRE].
L.J. Hall, K. Jedamzik, J. March-Russell and S.M. West, Freeze-In Production of FIMP Dark Matter, JHEP 03 (2010) 080 [arXiv:0911.1120] [INSPIRE].
X. Chu, T. Hambye and M.H.G. Tytgat, The Four Basic Ways of Creating Dark Matter Through a Portal, JCAP 05 (2012) 034 [arXiv:1112.0493] [INSPIRE].
G. Arcadi et al., The waning of the WIMP? A review of models, searches, and constraints, Eur. Phys. J. C 78 (2018) 203 [arXiv:1703.07364] [INSPIRE].
N. Bernal, M. Heikinheimo, T. Tenkanen, K. Tuominen and V. Vaskonen, The Dawn of FIMP Dark Matter: A Review of Models and Constraints, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 32 (2017) 1730023 [arXiv:1706.07442] [INSPIRE].
M. Heikinheimo and C. Spethmann, Galactic Centre GeV Photons from Dark Technicolor, JHEP 12 (2014) 084 [arXiv:1410.4842] [INSPIRE].
M. Heikinheimo, T. Tenkanen and K. Tuominen, Prospects for indirect detection of frozen-in dark matter, Phys. Rev. D 97 (2018) 063002 [arXiv:1801.03089] [INSPIRE].
F. D’Eramo and J. Thaler, Semi-annihilation of Dark Matter, JHEP 06 (2010) 109 [arXiv:1003.5912] [INSPIRE].
G. Bélanger, K. Kannike, A. Pukhov and M. Raidal, Z3 Scalar Singlet Dark Matter, JCAP 01 (2013) 022 [arXiv:1211.1014] [INSPIRE].
G. Bélanger, K. Kannike, A. Pukhov and M. Raidal, Impact of semi-annihilations on dark matter phenomenology — an example of ZN symmetric scalar dark matter, JCAP 04 (2012) 010 [arXiv:1202.2962] [INSPIRE].
W. Rodejohann and C.E. Yaguna, Scalar dark matter in the B−L model, JCAP 12 (2015) 032 [arXiv:1509.04036] [INSPIRE].
Y. Cai and A.P. Spray, Fermionic Semi-Annihilating Dark Matter, JHEP 01 (2016) 087 [arXiv:1509.08481] [INSPIRE].
Y. Cai and A. Spray, Low-Temperature Enhancement of Semi-annihilation and the AMS-02 Positron Anomaly, JHEP 10 (2018) 075 [arXiv:1807.00832] [INSPIRE].
A. Kamada, H.J. Kim, H. Kim and T. Sekiguchi, Self-Heating Dark Matter via Semiannihilation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120 (2018) 131802 [arXiv:1707.09238] [INSPIRE].
A. Kamada, H.J. Kim and H. Kim, Self-heating of Strongly Interacting Massive Particles, Phys. Rev. D 98 (2018) 023509 [arXiv:1805.05648] [INSPIRE].
X. Chu and C. Garcia-Cely, Core formation from self-heating dark matter, JCAP 07 (2018) 013 [arXiv:1803.09762] [INSPIRE].
F. Takahashi, Gravitino dark matter from inflaton decay, Phys. Lett. B 660 (2008) 100 [arXiv:0705.0579] [INSPIRE].
M. Garny, M. Sandora and M.S. Sloth, Planckian Interacting Massive Particles as Dark Matter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116 (2016) 101302 [arXiv:1511.03278] [INSPIRE].
Y. Mambrini and K.A. Olive, Gravitational Production of Dark Matter during Reheating, arXiv:2102.06214 [INSPIRE].
T. Moroi, H. Murayama and M. Yamaguchi, Cosmological constraints on the light stable gravitino, Phys. Lett. B 303 (1993) 289 [INSPIRE].
M. Bolz, A. Brandenburg and W. Buchmüller, Thermal production of gravitinos, Nucl. Phys. B 606 (2001) 518 [Erratum ibid. 790 (2008) 336] [hep-ph/0012052] [INSPIRE].
L. Darmé, A. Hryczuk, D. Karamitros and L. Roszkowski, Forbidden frozen-in dark matter, JHEP 11 (2019) 159 [arXiv:1908.05685] [INSPIRE].
S. Biondini and J. Ghiglieri, Freeze-in produced dark matter in the ultra-relativistic regime, JCAP 03 (2021) 075 [arXiv:2012.09083] [INSPIRE].
P. Asadi, E.D. Kramer, E. Kuflik, G.W. Ridgway, T.R. Slatyer and J. Smirnov, Thermal Squeezeout of Dark Matter, arXiv:2103.09827 [INSPIRE].
O. Lebedev, The Higgs Portal to Cosmology, arXiv:2104.03342 [INSPIRE].
G. Bélanger, B. Dumont, U. Ellwanger, J.F. Gunion and S. Kraml, Global fit to Higgs signal strengths and couplings and implications for extended Higgs sectors, Phys. Rev. D 88 (2013) 075008 [arXiv:1306.2941] [INSPIRE].
O. Lebedev and T. Toma, Relativistic Freeze-in, Phys. Lett. B 798 (2019) 134961 [arXiv:1908.05491] [INSPIRE].
S. Heeba, F. Kahlhoefer and P. Stöcker, Freeze-in production of decaying dark matter in five steps, JCAP 11 (2018) 048 [arXiv:1809.04849] [INSPIRE].
G. Bélanger, C. Delaunay, A. Pukhov and B. Zaldivar, Dark matter abundance from the sequential freeze-in mechanism, Phys. Rev. D 102 (2020) 035017 [arXiv:2005.06294] [INSPIRE].
T. Binder, T. Bringmann, M. Gustafsson and A. Hryczuk, Early kinetic decoupling of dark matter: when the standard way of calculating the thermal relic density fails, Phys. Rev. D 96 (2017) 115010 [Erratum ibid. 101 (2020) 099901] [arXiv:1706.07433] [INSPIRE].
T. Binder, T. Bringmann, M. Gustafsson and A. Hryczuk, DRAKE: Dark matter Relic Abundance beyond Kinetic Equilibrium, arXiv:2103.01944 [INSPIRE].
A. Hektor, A. Hryczuk and K. Kannike, Improved bounds on ℤ3 singlet dark matter, JHEP 03 (2019) 204 [arXiv:1901.08074] [INSPIRE].
L.G. van den Aarssen, T. Bringmann and Y.C. Goedecke, Thermal decoupling and the smallest subhalo mass in dark matter models with Sommerfeld-enhanced annihilation rates, Phys. Rev. D 85 (2012) 123512 [arXiv:1202.5456] [INSPIRE].
P.J. Fitzpatrick, H. Liu, T.R. Slatyer and Y.-D. Tsai, New Pathways to the Relic Abundance of Vector-Portal Dark Matter, arXiv:2011.01240 [INSPIRE].
G. Arcadi, O. Lebedev, S. Pokorski and T. Toma, Real Scalar Dark Matter: Relativistic Treatment, JHEP 08 (2019) 050 [arXiv:1906.07659] [INSPIRE].
T. Bringmann and S. Hofmann, Thermal decoupling of WIMPs from first principles, JCAP 04 (2007) 016 [Erratum ibid. 03 (2016) E02] [hep-ph/0612238] [INSPIRE].
T. Binder, L. Covi, A. Kamada, H. Murayama, T. Takahashi and N. Yoshida, Matter Power Spectrum in Hidden Neutrino Interacting Dark Matter Models: A Closer Look at the Collision Term, JCAP 11 (2016) 043 [arXiv:1602.07624] [INSPIRE].
N. Bernal, Boosting Freeze-in through Thermalization, JCAP 10 (2020) 006 [arXiv:2005.08988] [INSPIRE].
D. O’Connell, M.J. Ramsey-Musolf and M.B. Wise, Minimal Extension of the Standard Model Scalar Sector, Phys. Rev. D 75 (2007) 037701 [hep-ph/0611014] [INSPIRE].
M.W. Winkler, Decay and detection of a light scalar boson mixing with the Higgs boson, Phys. Rev. D 99 (2019) 015018 [arXiv:1809.01876] [INSPIRE].
CHARM collaboration, Search for Axion Like Particle Production in 400-GeV Proton-Copper Interactions, Phys. Lett. B 157 (1985) 458 [INSPIRE].
E949 collaboration, New measurement of the K+ → \( {\pi}^{+}\nu \overline{\nu} \) branching ratio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101 (2008) 191802 [arXiv:0808.2459] [INSPIRE].
LHCb collaboration, Search for long-lived scalar particles in B+ → K+χ(μ+μ−) decays, Phys. Rev. D 95 (2017) 071101 [arXiv:1612.07818] [INSPIRE].
LHCb collaboration, Search for hidden-sector bosons in B0 → K*0μ+μ− decays, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115 (2015) 161802 [arXiv:1508.04094] [INSPIRE].
A. Fradette and M. Pospelov, BBN for the LHC: constraints on lifetimes of the Higgs portal scalars, Phys. Rev. D 96 (2017) 075033 [arXiv:1706.01920] [INSPIRE].
G. Krnjaic, Probing Light Thermal Dark-Matter With a Higgs Portal Mediator, Phys. Rev. D 94 (2016) 073009 [arXiv:1512.04119] [INSPIRE].
FASER collaboration, FASER’s physics reach for long-lived particles, Phys. Rev. D 99 (2019) 095011 [arXiv:1811.12522] [INSPIRE].
SHiP collaboration, A facility to Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) at the CERN SPS, arXiv:1504.04956 [INSPIRE].
MATHUSLA collaboration, An Update to the Letter of Intent for MATHUSLA: Search for Long-Lived Particles at the HL-LHC, arXiv:2009.01693 [INSPIRE].
G. Lanfranchi, M. Pospelov and P. Schuster, The Search for Feebly-Interacting Particles, arXiv:2011.02157 [INSPIRE].
MAGIC and Fermi-LAT collaborations, Limits to Dark Matter Annihilation Cross-Section from a Combined Analysis of MAGIC and Fermi-LAT Observations of Dwarf Satellite Galaxies, JCAP 02 (2016) 039 [arXiv:1601.06590] [INSPIRE].
CTA collaboration, Sensitivity of the Cherenkov Telescope Array to a dark matter signal from the Galactic centre, JCAP 01 (2021) 057 [arXiv:2007.16129] [INSPIRE].
A. Cuoco, B. Eiteneuer, J. Heisig and M. Krämer, A global fit of the γ-ray galactic center excess within the scalar singlet Higgs portal model, JCAP 06 (2016) 050 [arXiv:1603.08228] [INSPIRE].
T.R. Slatyer, Indirect dark matter signatures in the cosmic dark ages. I. Generalizing the bound on s-wave dark matter annihilation from Planck results, Phys. Rev. D 93 (2016) 023527 [arXiv:1506.03811] [INSPIRE].
G. Arcadi, F.S. Queiroz and C. Siqueira, The Semi-Hooperon: Gamma-ray and anti-proton excesses in the Galactic Center, Phys. Lett. B 775 (2017) 196 [arXiv:1706.02336] [INSPIRE].
A. Kamada and H.J. Kim, Escalating core formation with dark matter self-heating, Phys. Rev. D 102 (2020) 043009 [arXiv:1911.09717] [INSPIRE].
T. Bringmann, P.F. Depta, M. Hufnagel, J.T. Ruderman and K. Schmidt-Hoberg, Pandemic Dark Matter, arXiv:2103.16572 [INSPIRE].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
ArXiv ePrint: 2104.05684
Rights and permissions
Open Access . This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
About this article
Cite this article
Hryczuk, A., Laletin, M. Dark matter freeze-in from semi-production. J. High Energ. Phys. 2021, 26 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2021)026
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Version of record:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2021)026