Making dark matter out of light: Freeze-in from plasma effects
Abstract
Dark matter (DM) could couple to particles in the Standard Model (SM) through a light vector mediator. In the limit of small coupling, this portal could be responsible for producing the observed DM abundance through a mechanism known as freeze-in. Furthermore, the requisite DM-SM couplings provide a concrete benchmark for direct and indirect searches for DM. We present updated calculations of the relic abundance for DM produced by freeze-in through a light vector mediator. We identify an additional production channel: the decay of photons that acquire an in-medium plasma mass. These plasmon decays are a dominant channel for DM production for sub-MeV DM masses, and including this channel leads to a significant reduction in the predicted signal strength for DM searches. Accounting for production from both plasmon decays and annihilations of SM fermions, the DM acquires a highly nonthermal phase-space distribution which impacts the cosmology at later times; these cosmological effects will be explored in a companion paper.
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); National Science Foundation (NSF); Hertz Foundation
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1525559
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1593893
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0019195; SC0019018; PHY-1748958; AST-1813694
- Resource Type:
- Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Physical Review D
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Physical Review D Journal Volume: 99 Journal Issue: 11; Journal ID: ISSN 2470-0010
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; 72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
Citation Formats
Dvorkin, Cora, Lin, Tongyan, and Schutz, Katelin. Making dark matter out of light: Freeze-in from plasma effects. United States: N. p., 2019.
Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.99.115009.
Dvorkin, Cora, Lin, Tongyan, & Schutz, Katelin. Making dark matter out of light: Freeze-in from plasma effects. United States. doi:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.115009
Dvorkin, Cora, Lin, Tongyan, and Schutz, Katelin. Tue .
"Making dark matter out of light: Freeze-in from plasma effects". United States. doi:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.115009.
@article{osti_1525559,
title = {Making dark matter out of light: Freeze-in from plasma effects},
author = {Dvorkin, Cora and Lin, Tongyan and Schutz, Katelin},
abstractNote = {Dark matter (DM) could couple to particles in the Standard Model (SM) through a light vector mediator. In the limit of small coupling, this portal could be responsible for producing the observed DM abundance through a mechanism known as freeze-in. Furthermore, the requisite DM-SM couplings provide a concrete benchmark for direct and indirect searches for DM. We present updated calculations of the relic abundance for DM produced by freeze-in through a light vector mediator. We identify an additional production channel: the decay of photons that acquire an in-medium plasma mass. These plasmon decays are a dominant channel for DM production for sub-MeV DM masses, and including this channel leads to a significant reduction in the predicted signal strength for DM searches. Accounting for production from both plasmon decays and annihilations of SM fermions, the DM acquires a highly nonthermal phase-space distribution which impacts the cosmology at later times; these cosmological effects will be explored in a companion paper.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevD.99.115009},
journal = {Physical Review D},
number = 11,
volume = 99,
place = {United States},
year = {2019},
month = {6}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.115009
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.115009
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 19 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
An absorption profile centred at 78 megahertz in the sky-averaged spectrum
journal, March 2018
- Bowman, Judd D.; Rogers, Alan E. E.; Monsalve, Raul A.
- Nature, Vol. 555, Issue 7694
Possible interaction between baryons and dark-matter particles revealed by the first stars
journal, March 2018
- Barkana, Rennan
- Nature, Vol. 555, Issue 7694
Detectability of Light Dark Matter with Superfluid Helium
journal, September 2016
- Schutz, Katelin; Zurek, Kathryn M.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 117, Issue 12
Non-thermal right-handed sneutrino dark matter and the Ω DM /Ω b problem
journal, April 2007
- Pagé, Véronique
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2007, Issue 04
Light dark matter: Models and constraints
journal, December 2017
- Knapen, Simon; Lin, Tongyan; Zurek, Kathryn M.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 96, Issue 11
Stellar limits on keV pseudoscalars
journal, February 1989
- Carlson, Eric D.; Salati, Pierre
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 218, Issue 1
Dark Matter Detectors as Dark Photon Helioscopes
journal, July 2013
- An, Haipeng; Pospelov, Maxim; Pradler, Josef
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 111, Issue 4
Small second acoustic peak from interacting cold dark matter?
journal, November 2001
- Dubovsky, S. L.; Gorbunov, D. S.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 64, Issue 12
The dawn of FIMP Dark Matter: A review of models and constraints
journal, September 2017
- Bernal, Nicolás; Heikinheimo, Matti; Tenkanen, Tommi
- International Journal of Modern Physics A, Vol. 32, Issue 27
Detecting superlight dark matter with Fermi-degenerate materials
journal, August 2016
- Hochberg, Yonit; Pyle, Matt; Zhao, Yue
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 8
SENSEI: First Direct-Detection Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Surface Run
journal, August 2018
- Crisler, Michael; Essig, Rouven; Estrada, Juan
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 121, Issue 6
Dark cosmic rays
journal, May 2017
- Hu, Ping-Kai; Kusenko, Alexander; Takhistov, Volodymyr
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 768
Right-handed sneutrino as cold dark matter
journal, March 2006
- Asaka, Takehiko; Ishiwata, Koji; Moroi, Takeo
- Physical Review D, Vol. 73, Issue 5
Strongly interacting massive particles through the axion portal
journal, December 2018
- Hochberg, Yonit; Kuflik, Eric; McGehee, Robert
- Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 11
BBN and the CMB constrain neutrino coupled light WIMPs
journal, April 2015
- Nollett, Kenneth M.; Steigman, Gary
- Physical Review D, Vol. 91, Issue 8
Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter with scintillating targets
journal, July 2017
- Derenzo, Stephen; Essig, Rouven; Massari, Andrea
- Physical Review D, Vol. 96, Issue 1
Freeze-in production of FIMP dark matter
journal, March 2010
- Hall, Lawrence J.; Jedamzik, Karsten; March-Russell, John
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2010, Issue 3
Detection of light dark matter with optical phonons in polar materials
journal, October 2018
- Knapen, Simon; Lin, Tongyan; Pyle, Matt
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 785
Stellar energy transfer by keV-mass scalars
journal, August 1989
- Raffelt, Georg G.; Starkman, Glenn D.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 40, Issue 4
Secluded WIMP dark matter
journal, April 2008
- Pospelov, Maxim; Ritz, Adam; Voloshin, Mikhail
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 662, Issue 1
Directional detection of dark matter with two-dimensional targets
journal, September 2017
- Hochberg, Yonit; Kahn, Yonatan; Lisanti, Mariangela
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 772
Stellar recipes for axion hunters
journal, October 2017
- Giannotti, Maurizio; Irastorza, Igor G.; Redondo, Javier
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2017, Issue 10
A small amount of mini-charged dark matter could cool the baryons in the early Universe
journal, May 2018
- Muñoz, Julian B.; Loeb, Abraham
- Nature, Vol. 557, Issue 7707
T ESTS OF THE G RAVITATIONAL I NVERSE -S QUARE L AW
journal, December 2003
- Adelberger, E. G.; Heckel, B. R.; Nelson, A. E.
- Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science, Vol. 53, Issue 1
Black hole superradiance signatures of ultralight vectors
journal, August 2017
- Baryakhtar, Masha; Lasenby, Robert; Teo, Mae
- Physical Review D, Vol. 96, Issue 3
Right-handed sneutrinos as nonthermal dark matter
journal, May 2006
- Gopalakrishna, Shrihari; Gouvêa, André de; Porod, Werner
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2006, Issue 05
Light Dark Matter from Forbidden Channels
journal, August 2015
- D’Agnolo, Raffaele Tito; Ruderman, Joshua T.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 115, Issue 6
Thermal Dark Matter Below a MeV
journal, January 2018
- Berlin, Asher; Blinov, Nikita
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 120, Issue 2
A review of short-range gravity experiments in the LHC era
journal, January 2015
- Murata, Jiro; Tanaka, Saki
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 32, Issue 3
Light axinos from freeze-in: production processes, phase space distributions, and Ly-α forest constraints
journal, January 2018
- Bae, Kyu Jung; Kamada, Ayuki; Liew, Seng Pei
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 01
Fourth Exception in the Calculation of Relic Abundances
journal, August 2017
- D’Agnolo, Raffaele Tito; Pappadopulo, Duccio; Ruderman, Joshua T.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 119, Issue 6
Directional detection of light dark matter with polar materials
journal, December 2018
- Griffin, Sinead; Knapen, Simon; Lin, Tongyan
- Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 11
Reopening the window on charged dark matter
journal, July 2009
- Chuzhoy, Leonid; Kolb, Edward W.
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2009, Issue 07
Freezing in, heating up, and freezing out: predictive nonthermal dark matter and low-mass direct detection
journal, October 2018
- Krnjaic, Gordan
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 10
Axions: Theory, Cosmology, and Experimental Searches
book, January 2008
- Beig, R.; Beiglböck, W.; Domcke, W.
- Lecture Notes in Physics
Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter with semiconductor targets
journal, May 2016
- Essig, Rouven; Fernández-Serra, Marivi; Mardon, Jeremy
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 5
Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter
journal, April 2012
- Essig, Rouven; Mardon, Jeremy; Volansky, Tomer
- Physical Review D, Vol. 85, Issue 7
Naturally light hidden photons in LARGE volume string compactifications
journal, November 2009
- Goodsell, Mark; Jaeckel, Joerg; Redondo, Javier
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2009, Issue 11
First Direct Detection Limits on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from XENON10
journal, July 2012
- Essig, Rouven; Manalaysay, Aaron; Mardon, Jeremy
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 2
Detection of sub-MeV dark matter with three-dimensional Dirac materials
journal, January 2018
- Hochberg, Yonit; Kahn, Yonatan; Lisanti, Mariangela
- Physical Review D, Vol. 97, Issue 1
Turning off the lights: How dark is dark matter?
journal, March 2011
- McDermott, Samuel D.; Yu, Hai-Bo; Zurek, Kathryn M.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 83, Issue 6
Severely Constraining Dark-Matter Interpretations of the 21-cm Anomaly
journal, July 2018
- Berlin, Asher; Hooper, Dan; Krnjaic, Gordan
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 121, Issue 1
Constraints on millicharged neutrinos via analysis of data from atomic ionizations with germanium detectors at sub-keV sensitivities
journal, July 2014
- Chen, Jiunn-Wei; Chi, Hsin-Chang; Li, Hau-Bin
- Physical Review D, Vol. 90, Issue 1
Kinetic mixing of the photon with hidden U(1)s in string phenomenology
journal, July 2008
- Abel, S. A.; Goodsell, M. D.; Jaeckel, J.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2008, Issue 07
Neutrino and Axion Bounds from the Globular Cluster M5 (NGC 5904)
journal, December 2013
- Viaux, N.; Catelan, M.; Stetson, P. B.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 111, Issue 23
Superconducting Detectors for Superlight Dark Matter
journal, January 2016
- Hochberg, Yonit; Zhao, Yue; Zurek, Kathryn M.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 116, Issue 1
Revisiting the axion bounds from the Galactic white dwarf luminosity function
journal, October 2014
- Bertolami, M. M. Miller; Melendez, B. E.; Althaus, L. G.
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 10
Dark matter freeze-out in a nonrelativistic sector
journal, August 2016
- Pappadopulo, Duccio; Ruderman, Joshua T.; Trevisan, Gabriele
- Physical Review D, Vol. 94, Issue 3
Stellar cooling bounds on new light particles: plasma mixing effects
journal, February 2017
- Hardy, Edward; Lasenby, Robert
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2017, Issue 2
Cosmic abundances of stable particles: Improved analysis
journal, August 1991
- Gondolo, Paolo; Gelmini, Graciela
- Nuclear Physics B, Vol. 360, Issue 1
Calculations of relic densities in the early universe
journal, December 1988
- Srednicki, Mark; Watkins, Richard; Olive, Keith A.
- Nuclear Physics B, Vol. 310, Issue 3-4
Updated bounds on milli-charged particles
journal, May 2000
- Davidson, Sacha; Hannestad, Steen; Raffelt, Georg
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2000, Issue 05
Supernova 1987A constraints on sub-GeV dark sectors, millicharged particles, the QCD axion, and an axion-like particle
journal, September 2018
- Chang, Jae Hyeok; Essig, Rouven; McDermott, Samuel D.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 9
The four basic ways of creating dark matter through a portal
journal, May 2012
- Chu, Xiaoyong; Hambye, Thomas; Tytgat, Michel H. G.
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2012, Issue 05
BBN and the CMB constrain light, electromagnetically coupled WIMPs
journal, April 2014
- Nollett, Kenneth M.; Steigman, Gary
- Physical Review D, Vol. 89, Issue 8
Correlated signals at the energy and intensity frontiers from non-Abelian kinetic mixing
journal, September 2016
- Barello, G.; Chang, Spencer; Newby, Christopher A.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 94, Issue 5
Mechanism for Thermal Relic Dark Matter of Strongly Interacting Massive Particles
journal, October 2014
- Hochberg, Yonit; Kuflik, Eric; Volansky, Tomer
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 113, Issue 17
Dark radiation constraints on minicharged particles in models with a hidden photon
journal, February 2014
- Vogel, Hendrik; Redondo, Javier
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 02
Dark matter self-interactions and small scale structure
journal, February 2018
- Tulin, Sean; Yu, Hai-Bo
- Physics Reports, Vol. 730
A lower bound on the mass of cold thermal dark matter from Planck
journal, August 2013
- Bœhm, Céline; Dolan, Matthew J.; McCabe, Christopher
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2013, Issue 08
Constraining dark matter-baryon scattering with linear cosmology
journal, January 2014
- Dvorkin, Cora; Blum, Kfir; Kamionkowski, Marc
- Physical Review D, Vol. 89, Issue 2
The cosmology of sub-MeV dark matter
journal, October 2017
- Green, Daniel; Rajendran, Surjeet
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2017, Issue 10
Calculation of screening in a hot plasma
journal, April 1991
- Braaten, Eric; Yuan, Tzu Chiang
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 66, Issue 17
Dark Matter Search Results from a One Ton-Year Exposure of XENON1T
journal, September 2018
- Aprile, E.; Aalbers, J.; Agostini, F.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 121, Issue 11
Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark-Matter–Electron Scattering from the DarkSide-50 Experiment
journal, September 2018
- Agnes, P.; Albuquerque, I. F. M.; Alexander, T.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 121, Issue 11
Transverse interactions and transport in relativistic quark-gluon and electromagnetic plasmas
journal, April 1990
- Baym, Gordon; Monien, H.; Pethick, C. J.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 64, Issue 16
Scalar dark matter candidates
journal, April 2004
- Bœhm, C.; Fayet, P.
- Nuclear Physics B, Vol. 683, Issue 1-2
SENSEI: Direct-Detection Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Shallow Underground Run Using a Prototype Skipper CCD
journal, April 2019
- Abramoff, Orr; Barak, Liron; Bloch, Itay M.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 122, Issue 16
Impeded Dark Matter
journal, December 2016
- Kopp, Joachim; Liu, Jia; Slatyer, Tracy R.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 12
Astrophysical axion bounds diminished by screening effects
journal, February 1986
- Raffelt, Georg G.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 33, Issue 4
Electrical neutrality of atoms and grand unification models
journal, April 1984
- Okun, L. B.; Voloshin, M. B.; Zakharov, V. I.
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 138, Issue 1-3
Probing sub-GeV dark matter-baryon scattering with cosmological observables
journal, May 2018
- Xu, Weishuang Linda; Dvorkin, Cora; Chael, Andrew
- Physical Review D, Vol. 97, Issue 10
Critical assessment of CMB limits on dark matter-baryon scattering: New treatment of the relative bulk velocity
journal, December 2018
- Boddy, Kimberly K.; Gluscevic, Vera; Poulin, Vivian
- Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 12
Enabling forbidden dark matter
journal, October 2017
- Cline, James M.; Liu, Hongwan; Slatyer, Tracy R.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 96, Issue 8
New stellar constraints on dark photons
journal, October 2013
- An, Haipeng; Pospelov, Maxim; Pradler, Josef
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 725, Issue 4-5
Screening of static electromagnetic fields in hot QED plasmas
journal, August 1995
- Blaizot, Jean-Paul; Iancu, Edmond; Parwani, Rajesh R.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 52, Issue 4
Halo-Shape and Relic-Density Exclusions of Sommerfeld-Enhanced Dark Matter Explanations of Cosmic Ray Excesses
journal, April 2010
- Feng, Jonathan L.; Kaplinghat, Manoj; Yu, Hai-Bo
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 104, Issue 15
Dark matter direct detection is testing freeze-in
journal, October 2018
- Hambye, Thomas; Tytgat, Michel H. G.; Vandecasteele, Jérôme
- Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 7
Early-Universe constraints on dark matter-baryon scattering and their implications for a global 21 cm signal
journal, July 2018
- Slatyer, Tracy R.; Wu, Chih-Liang
- Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 2
Light dark matter in superfluid helium: Detection with multi-excitation production
journal, March 2017
- Knapen, Simon; Lin, Tongyan; Zurek, Kathryn M.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 95, Issue 5
Model for Thermal Relic Dark Matter of Strongly Interacting Massive Particles
journal, July 2015
- Hochberg, Yonit; Kuflik, Eric; Murayama, Hitoshi
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 115, Issue 2
Right-handed sneutrino as cold dark matter of the Universe
journal, March 2007
- Asaka, Takehiko; Ishiwata, Koji; Moroi, Takeo
- Physical Review D, Vol. 75, Issue 6
Dark gauge bosons: LHC signatures of non-abelian kinetic mixing
journal, July 2017
- Argüelles, Carlos A.; He, Xiao-Gang; Ovanesyan, Grigory
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 770
Neutrino energy loss from the plasma process at all temperatures and densities
journal, August 1993
- Braaten, Eric; Segel, Daniel
- Physical Review D, Vol. 48, Issue 4
Vector SIMP dark matter
journal, October 2017
- Choi, Soo-Min; Hochberg, Yonit; Kuflik, Eric
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2017, Issue 10
Tighter limits on dark matter explanations of the anomalous EDGES 21 cm signal
journal, November 2018
- Kovetz, Ely D.; Poulin, Vivian; Gluscevic, Vera
- Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 10
Exponentially light dark matter from coannihilation
journal, August 2018
- D’Agnolo, Raffaele Tito; Mondino, Cristina; Ruderman, Joshua T.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 8
Electric-charge quantization
journal, March 1993
- Foot, R.; Lew, H.; Volkas, R. R.
- Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics, Vol. 19, Issue 3
First cosmological constraint on the effective theory of dark matter-proton interactions
journal, October 2018
- Boddy, Kimberly K.; Gluscevic, Vera
- Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 8
Kinetic mixing and the supersymmetric gauge hierarchy
journal, May 1997
- Dienes, Keith R.; Kolda, Christopher; March-Russell, John
- Nuclear Physics B, Vol. 492, Issue 1-2
Narrowing the window for millicharged particles by CMB anisotropy
journal, January 2004
- Dubovsky, S. L.; Gorbunov, D. S.; Rubtsov, G. I.
- Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters, Vol. 79, Issue 1
Dark-Matter Particles without Weak-Scale Masses or Weak Interactions
journal, December 2008
- Feng, Jonathan L.; Kumar, Jason
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 23
First Dark Matter Constraints from a SuperCDMS Single-Charge Sensitive Detector
journal, August 2018
- Agnese, R.; Aralis, T.; Aramaki, T.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 121, Issue 5
Strong constraints on light dark matter interpretation of the EDGES signal
journal, November 2018
- Barkana, Rennan; Outmezguine, Nadav Joseph; Redigolo, Diego
- Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 10