Charged planckian interacting dark matter

Mathias Garny, Andrea Palessandro, McCullen Sandora, Martin S. Sloth

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

A minimal model of Cold Dark Matter (CDM) is a very massive particle with only gravitational interactions, also called Planckian Interacting Dark Matter (PIDM). Here we consider an extension of the PIDM framework by an unbroken U(1) gauge symmetry under which the PIDM is charged, but remains only gravitationally coupled to the Standard Model (SM). Contrary to "hidden charged dark matter", the charged PIDM never reaches thermal equilibrium with the SM. The dark sector is populated by freeze-in via gravitational interactions at reheating. If the dark fine-structure constant α D is larger than about 10 -3 , the dark sector thermalizes within itself, and the PIDM abundance is further modified by freeze-out in the dark sector. Interestingly, this largely reduces the dependence of the final abundance on the reheating temperature, as compared to an uncharged PIDM. Thermalization within the dark sector is driven by inelastic radiative processes, and affected by the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect. The observed CDM abundance can be obtained over a wide mass range from the weak to the GUT scale, and for phenomenologically interesting couplings α D∼ 10 -2 . Due to the different thermal history, the charged PIDM can be discriminated from "hidden charged dark matter" by more precise measurements of the effective number of neutrino species N eff .

Original languageEnglish
Article number021
JournalJournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Volume2019
Issue number1
Number of pages36
ISSN1475-7516
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8. Jan 2019

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