Hidden sector monopole dark matter with matter domination
The thermal freeze-out mechanism for relic dark matter heavier than O(10 – 100 TeV) requires cross-sections that violate perturbative unitarity. Yet the existence of dark matter heavier than these scales is certainly plausible from a particle physics perspective, pointing to the need for a non-thermal cosmological history for such theories. Topological dark matter is a well-motivated scenario of this kind. Here the hidden-sector dark matter can be produced in abundance through the Kibble-Zurek mechanism describing the non-equilibrium dynamics of defects produced in a second order phase transition. We revisit the original topological dark matter scenario, focusing on hidden-sector magnetic monopoles, and consider more general cosmological histories. We find that a monopole mass of order (1–105) PeV is generic for the thermal histories considered here, if monopoles are to entirely reproduce the current abundance of dark matter. In particular, in a scenario involving an early era of matter domination, the monopole number density is always less than or equal to that in a pure radiation dominated equivalent provided a certain condition on critical exponents is satisfied. This results in a larger monopole mass needed to account for a fixed relic abundance in such cosmologies.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC). High Energy Physics (HEP) (SC-25); USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- 89233218CNA000001; AC52-06NA25396; SC0014664
- OSTI ID:
- 1807839
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-20-25052; TRN: US2212841
- Journal Information:
- Journal of High Energy Physics (Online), Vol. 2020, Issue 11; ISSN 1029-8479
- Publisher:
- Springer BerlinCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Hidden sector monopole, vector dark matter and dark radiation with Higgs portal
PeV-scale dark matter as a thermal relic of a decoupled sector