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We explore gravitational wave signals arising from first-order phase transitions occurring in a secluded hidden sector, allowing for the possibility that the hidden sector may have a different temperature than the Standard Model sector. We present the sensitivity to such scenarios for both current and future gravitational wave detectors in a model-independent fashion. Since secluded hidden sectors are of particular interest for dark matter models at the MeV scale or below, we pay special attention to the reach of pulsar timing arrays. Cosmological constraints on light degrees of freedom restrict the number of sub-MeV particles in a hidden sector, as well as the hidden sector temperature. Nevertheless, we find that observable first-order phase transitions can occur. To illustrate our results, we consider two minimal benchmark models: a model with two gauge singlet scalars and a model with a spontaneously broken U (1) gauge symmetry in the hidden sector. CONTENTS

The cosmological abundance of dark matter can be significantly influenced by the temperature dependence of particle masses and vacuum expectation values. We illustrate this point in three simple freeze-in models. The first one, which we call kinematically induced freeze-in, is based on the observation that the effective mass of a scalar temporarily becomes very small as the scalar potential undergoes a second order phase transition. This opens dark matter production channels that are otherwise forbidden. The second model we consider, dubbed vev-induced freeze-in, is a fermionic Higgs portal scenario. Its scalar sector is augmented compared to the Standard Model by an additional scalar singlet, S, which couples to dark matter and temporarily acquires a vacuum expectation value (a twostep phase transition or "vev flip-flop"). While S = 0, the modified coupling structure in the scalar sector implies that dark matter production is significantly enhanced compared to the S = 0 phases realised at very early times and again today. The third model, which we call mixing-induced freeze-in, is similar in spirit, but here it is the mixing of dark sector fermions, induced by non-zero S , that temporarily boosts the dark matter production rate. For all three scenarios, we carefully dissect the evolution of the dark sector in the early Universe. We compute the DM relic abundance as a function of the model parameters, emphasising the importance of thermal corrections and the proper treatment of phase transitions in the calculation.

Next generation neutrino oscillation experiments like DUNE and T2HK are multi-purpose observatories, with a rich physics program beyond oscillation measurements. A special role is played by their near detector facilities, which are particularly well-suited to search for weakly coupled dark sector particles produced in the primary target. In this paper, we demonstrate this by estimating the sensitivity of the DUNE near detectors to the scattering of sub-GeV DM particles and to the decay of sub-GeV sterile neutrinos (“heavy neutral leptons”). We discuss in particular the importance of the DUNE-PRISM design, which allows some of the near detectors to be moved away from the beam axis. At such off-axis locations, the signal-to-background ratio improves for many new physics searches. We find that this leads to a dramatic boost in the sensitivity to boosted DM particles interacting mainly with hadrons, while for boosted DM interacting with leptons, data taken on-axis leads to marginally stronger exclusion limits. Searches for heavy neutral leptons perform equally well in both configurations.

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