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

Dvorkin, Cora; Lin, Tongyan; Schutz, Katelin

doi:10.1103/physrevd.99.115009

Cited by 153 publications

(181 citation statements)

References 113 publications

(178 reference statements)

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“…The same region would also be covered by the SN1987A supernova bound [66,72] on which, however, some doubts have been recently casted [73]. We also show the curve for dark matter relic abundance via freeze-in scenario [9,67,68,74], i.e. a scenario in which the interaction is very weak and slowly builds up the dark matter relic abundance non-thermally.…”

Section: Projections and Comparison With Existing Boundsmentioning

confidence: 75%

Dark matter, dark photon and superfluid He-4 from effective field theory

et al. 2020

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We consider a model of sub-GeV dark matter whose interaction with the Standard Model is mediated by a new vector boson (the dark photon) which couples kinetically to the photon. We describe the possibility of constraining such a model using a superfluid He-4 detector, by means of an effective theory for the description of the superfluid phonon. We find that such a detector could provide bounds that are competitive with other direct detection experiments only for ultralight vector mediator, in agreement with previous studies. As a byproduct we also present, for the first time, the low-energy effective field theory for the interaction between photons and phonons.

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Section: Projections and Comparison With Existing Boundsmentioning

confidence: 75%

Dark matter, dark photon and superfluid He-4 from effective field theory

et al. 2020

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“…This finding is particularly relevant if the thermal mass of one of these eigenstates is large enough to allow for direct decays into DM particles. Such plasmon decays have recently been found to give a relevant contribution to the freeze-in production of sub-MeV DM [23,24], and we extend the discussion there to more general gauge groups and to temperatures above the electroweak phase transition (EWPT).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Probing the freeze-in mechanism in dark matter models with U(1)′ gauge extensions

Heeba

Kahlhoefer

2020

Phys. Rev. D

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New gauge bosons at the MeV scale with tiny gauge couplings (so-called dark photons) can be responsible for the freeze-in production of dark matter and provide a clear target for present and future experiments. We study the effects of thermal mixing between dark photons and Standard Model gauge bosons and of the resulting plasmon decays on dark matter production before and after the electroweak phase transition. In the parameter regions preferred by the observed dark matter relic abundance, the dark photon is sufficiently long-lived to be probed with fixed-target experiments and light enough to induce direct detection signals. Indeed, current limits from XENON1T already constrain Dirac fermion dark matter in the GeV to TeV range produced via the freeze-in mechanism. We illustrate our findings for the case of a U (1)B−L gauge extension and discuss possible generalisations.

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“…We include the contribution from plasmon decays, recently studied in Refs. [9,10,59]. In the top row we furthermore indicate two benchmark points, corresponding to m χ = 20 keV, σ e = 2 · 10 −41 (orange) and m χ = 50 keV, σ e = 3 · 10 −41 .…”

Section: Results For Dark Matter Scatteringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The total energy of the initial and final state are denoted by E i and E f . In the so-called Standard Halo Model, the DM velocity distribution is given by 10) where N is a normalization factor, v e is the Earth's velocity, v 0 and v esc are the velocity dispersion and the Galactic escape velocity and Θ denotes the Heaviside step function. Note that the velocity distribution only depends on v = |v| and cos θ e =v ·v e (the hat indicates unit vectors), i.e.…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dirac materials for sub-MeV dark matter detection: New targets and improved formalism

2020

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Because of their tiny band gaps Dirac materials promise to improve the sensitivity for dark matter particles in the sub-MeV mass range by many orders of magnitude. Here we study several candidate materials and calculate the expected rates for dark matter scattering via light and heavy dark photons as well as for dark photon absorption. A particular emphasis is placed on how to distinguish a dark matter signal from background by searching for the characteristic daily modulation of the signal, which arises from the directional sensitivity of anisotropic materials in combination with the rotation of the Earth. We revisit and improve previous calculations and propose two new candidate Dirac materials: BNQ-TTF and Yb 3 PbO. We perform detailed calculations of the band structures of these materials and of ZrTe 5 based on density functional theory and determine the band gap, the Fermi velocities and the dielectric tensor. We show that in both ZrTe 5 and BNQ-TTF the amplitude of the daily modulation can be larger than 10% of the total rate, allowing to probe the preferred regions of parameter space even in the presence of sizeable backgrounds. BNQ-TTF is found to be particularly sensitive to small dark matter masses (below 100 keV for scattering and below 50 meV for absorption), while Yb 3 PbO performs best for heavier particles.

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

Cited by 153 publications

References 113 publications

Dark matter, dark photon and superfluid He-4 from effective field theory

Dark matter, dark photon and superfluid He-4 from effective field theory

Probing the freeze-in mechanism in dark matter models with U(1)′ gauge extensions

Dirac materials for sub-MeV dark matter detection: New targets and improved formalism

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