Joint Cosmic Microwave Background and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Light Dark Sectors with Dark Radiation
Abstract
Dark sectors provide a compelling theoretical framework for thermally producing sub-GeV dark matter, and motivate an expansive new accelerator and direct-detection experimental program. We demonstrate the power of constraining such dark sectors using the measured effective number of neutrino species, Neff, from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and primordial elemental abundances from big bang nucleosynthesis. As a concrete example, we consider a dark matter particle of arbitrary spin that interacts with the standard model via a massive dark photon, accounting for an arbitrary number of light degrees of freedom in the dark sector. We exclude dark matter masses below ~4 MeV at 95% confidence for all dark matter spins and dark photon masses. These bounds hold regardless of additional new light, inert degrees of freedom in the dark sector, and for dark matter-electron scattering cross sections many orders of magnitude below current experimental constraints. The strength of these constraints will only continue to improve with future CMB experiments.
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Science Foundation (NSF)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1875010
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1980299
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0007968; DGE1839302; PHY-1915409; PHY-1554858; PHY-1607611
- Resource Type:
- Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Physical Review Letters
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Volume: 129 Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 0031-9007
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; Physics; big bang nucleosynthesis; cosmic microwave background; cosmology; particle astrophysics; particle dark matter
Citation Formats
Giovanetti, Cara, Lisanti, Mariangela, Liu, Hongwan, and Ruderman, Joshua T. Joint Cosmic Microwave Background and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Light Dark Sectors with Dark Radiation. United States: N. p., 2022.
Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.021302.
Giovanetti, Cara, Lisanti, Mariangela, Liu, Hongwan, & Ruderman, Joshua T. Joint Cosmic Microwave Background and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Light Dark Sectors with Dark Radiation. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.021302
Giovanetti, Cara, Lisanti, Mariangela, Liu, Hongwan, and Ruderman, Joshua T. Wed .
"Joint Cosmic Microwave Background and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Light Dark Sectors with Dark Radiation". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.021302.
@article{osti_1875010,
title = {Joint Cosmic Microwave Background and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Light Dark Sectors with Dark Radiation},
author = {Giovanetti, Cara and Lisanti, Mariangela and Liu, Hongwan and Ruderman, Joshua T.},
abstractNote = {Dark sectors provide a compelling theoretical framework for thermally producing sub-GeV dark matter, and motivate an expansive new accelerator and direct-detection experimental program. We demonstrate the power of constraining such dark sectors using the measured effective number of neutrino species, Neff, from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and primordial elemental abundances from big bang nucleosynthesis. As a concrete example, we consider a dark matter particle of arbitrary spin that interacts with the standard model via a massive dark photon, accounting for an arbitrary number of light degrees of freedom in the dark sector. We exclude dark matter masses below ~4 MeV at 95% confidence for all dark matter spins and dark photon masses. These bounds hold regardless of additional new light, inert degrees of freedom in the dark sector, and for dark matter-electron scattering cross sections many orders of magnitude below current experimental constraints. The strength of these constraints will only continue to improve with future CMB experiments.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.021302},
journal = {Physical Review Letters},
number = 2,
volume = 129,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Jul 06 00:00:00 EDT 2022},
month = {Wed Jul 06 00:00:00 EDT 2022}
}
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