A model of dark matter (DM) that communicates with the Standard Model (SM) exclusively through suppressed dimension five operator is discussed. The SM is augmented with a symmetry $U(1)_X \otimes Z_2$, where $U(1)_X$ is gauged and broken spontaneously by a very heavy decoupled scalar. The massive $U(1)_X$ vector boson ($X^μ$) is stabilized being odd under unbroken $Z_2$ and therefore may contribute as the DM component of the universe. Dark sector field strength tensor $X^{μν}$ couples to the SM hypercharge tensor $B^{μν}$ via the presence of a heavier $Z_2$ odd real scalar $Φ$, i.e. $1/Λ\; X^{μν}B_{μν}Φ$, with $Λ$ being a scale of new physics. The freeze-in production of the vector boson dark matter feebly coupled to the SM is advocated in this analysis. Limitations of the so-called UV freeze-in mechanism that emerge when the maximum reheat temperature $T_\text{RH}$ drops down close to the scale of DM mass are discussed. The parameter space of the model consistent with the observed DM abundance is determined. The model easily and naturally avoids both direct and indirect DM searches. Possibility for detection at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is also considered. A Stueckelberg formulation of the model is derived.
We detailed our discovery of a chiral enhancement in the production cross sections of massive spin-2 gravitons, below the electroweak symmetry breaking scale, that makes them ideal dark matter candidates for the freeze-in mechanism. The result is independent of the physics at high scales, and points toward masses in the keV- MeV range. The graviton is, therefore, a sub-MeV dark matter particle, as favored by the small scale galaxy structures. We apply the novel calculation to a Randall-Sundrum model with multiple branes, showing a significant parameter space where the first two massive gravito…
We propose a new Time Projection Chamber particle detector (TPC) to search for the existence of feebly-interacting bosons and to investigate the existence of the X17 boson, proposed by the ATOMKI group to explain anomalous results in the angular distributions of electron-positron pairs created in proton-induced nuclear reactions. Our design will provide 200 times greater sensitivity than ATOMKI and the program of research will also provide world-leading limits on feebly interacting bosons in the mass range of 5 - 25 MeV.
We show that the type-I seesaw, responsible for generating the light neutrino mass, itself is capable of accommodating one of the three right handed neutrinos as a freeze-in type of dark matter (DM) where the required smallness of the associated coupling is connected to the lightness of the (smallest) active neutrino mass. It turns out that (a) the non-thermal production of DM having mass $\lesssim \mathcal{O}(1)$ MeV (via decays of $W, Z$ bosons and SM Higgs) consistent with relic density as well as (b) its stability determine this smallest active neutrino mass uniquely $\sim {\mathcal{O}}(10…
We present a simple mechanism which allows the simultaneous generation of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe along with its dark matter content. To this goal, we employ the out-of-equilibrium decays of heavy bath states into a feebly coupled dark matter particle and Standard Model charged fermions. These decays lead to dark matter production via the freeze-in mechanism and, assuming that they further violate $CP$, can generate a viable matter-antimatter asymmetry in the resonant regime. We illustrate this mechanism by studying a particular realization of this general scenario, where the role…
Despite the compelling amount of evidence for the existence of dark matter, its exact nature is still one of the main open questions in modern physics. A great experimental effort has been performed to probe one of the most popular dark matter candidates, the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle or WIMP, however, there has not been any conclusive detection yet. Hence, these searches place strong constraints on the WIMP paradigm. The community has therefore started to consider alternatives who are able to evade the strong experimental constraints. Such a candidate that has gained a lot of attent…
At the dawn of a new decade, particle physics faces the challenge of explaining the mystery of dark matter, the origin of matter over antimatter in the Universe, the apparent fine-tuning of the electro-weak scale, and many other aspects of fundamental physics. Perhaps the most striking frontier to emerge in the search for answers involves new physics at mass scales comparable to familiar matter, below the GeV scale, but with very feeble interaction strength. New theoretical ideas to address dark matter and other fundamental questions predict such feebly interacting particles (FIPs) at these sc…
Starting from first principles, we study radiative transfer by new feebly-interacting bosons (FIBs) such as axions, axion-like particles (ALPs), dark photons, and others. Our key simplification is to include only boson emission or absorption (including decay), but not scattering between different modes of the radiation field. Based on a given distribution of temperature and FIB absorption rate in a star, we derive explicit volume-integral expressions for the boson luminosity, reaching from the free-streaming to the strong-trapping limit. The latter is seen explicitly to correspond to quasi-the…
In this conference paper we summarise the findings of a recent study, where the impact of the ultra-relativistic regime on the production of a feebly interacting dark matter particle is considered. As its population accumulates over the thermal history, we inspected thoroughly the temperature window $T \gg M$, which has been previously neglected in the context of dark matter models with renormalizable operators. At high temperatures, and for the model considered in our work, the production rate of the feebly interacting particle is driven by multiple soft scatterings, as well as $2 \to 2$ proc…
The recent observation of an excess in the electronic recoil data by the XENON1T detector has drawn many attentions as a potential hint for an extension of the Standard Model (SM). Absorption of a vector boson with the mass of $m_{A'}\!\in\!(2\,{\rm keV},\!3\,{\rm keV})$ is one of the feasible explanations to the excess. In the case where the vector boson explains the dark matter (DM) population today, it is highly probable that the vector boson belongs to a class of the warm dark matter (WDM) due to its suspected mass regime. In such a scenario, providing a good fit for the excess, the kineti…
Feebly interacting particles with masses with O(10-100) MeV can be copiously produced by core-collapse supernovae (SNe). In this paper we consider the case of MeV-ish sterile neutrinos and dark photons mixed with ordinary neutrinos and photons, respectively. Furthermore, both sterile neutrinos and dark photons may decay into positrons on their route to Earth. Such positrons would annihilate with electrons in the Galactic medium and contribute to the photon flux in the 511 keV line. Using the SPI (SPectrometer on INTEGRAL) observation of this line improves the bounds on the mixing parameters fo…
We study the feebly interacting massive particle dark matter whose production processes are significantly affected by the phase evolution and the complicated thermal corrections to the vector boson. We calculate the freeze-in processes to obtain the correct dark matter relic density by enumerating all the possible $1 \leftrightarrow 2$ and $2 \leftrightarrow 2$ processes. The predicted gravitational waves emitted by the first-order phase transitions and the cosmic strings are evaluated.
When dark matter particles only feebly interact with plasma constituents in the early universe, they never reach thermal equilibrium. As opposed to the freeze-out mechanism, where the dark matter abundance is determined at $T \ll M$, the energy density of a feebly interacting state builds up and increases over $T \gtrsim M$. In this work, we address the impact of the high-temperature regime on the dark matter production rate, where the dark and Standard Model particles are ultra-relativistic and nearly light-like. In this setting, multiple soft scatterings, as well as $2 \to 2$ processes, are …
Dark matter models can give rise to specific signatures at particle physics experiments or in cosmology. The details of the cosmological history can also influence the new physics signals to be expected at e.g. collider experiments. In these proceedings, we briefly summarize the case of dark matter weakly to feebly coupled to Standard Model fermions through t-channel portal dividing the discussion into three main regimes. We also underline the interplay between cosmology and particle physics.
We investigate the effect of feeble interaction of dark matter (DM) with hadronic matter on the equation of state (EoS) and structural properties of neutron stars (NSs) in static conditions. For the purpose we adopt the effective chiral model for the hadronic sector and for the first time in the context of possible existence of DM inside NSs, we introduce DM-SM interaction through light new physics mediator. Moreover, the mass of DM fermion, the mediator and the coupling are adopted from the self-interaction constraint from Bullet cluster and from present day relic abundance. Within the consid…
The short distance behavior of dark matter (DM) at galaxy scales exhibits several features not explained by the typical cold dark matter (CDM) with velocity-independent cross-section. We discuss a particle physics model with a hidden sector interacting feebly with the visible sector where a dark fermion self-interacts via a dark force with a light dark photon as the mediator. We study coupled Boltzmann equations involving two temperatures, one for each sector. We fit the velocity-dependent DM cross-section to the data from scales of dwarf galaxies to clusters consistent with relic density cons…
We consider a scenario where the dark sector includes two Feebly Interacting Massive Particles (FIMPs), with couplings to the Standard Model particles that allow their production in the Early Universe via thermal freeze-in. These couplings generically lead to the decay of the heavier dark matter component into the lighter, possibly leading to observable signals of the otherwise elusive FIMPs. Concretely, we argue that the loop induced decay $ψ_2\rightarrowψ_1γ$ for fermionic FIMPs, or $ϕ_2\rightarrowϕ_1γγ$ for scalar FIMPs, could have detectable rates for model parameters compatible with the o…
Feebly interacting thermal relics are promising dark matter candidates. Among them, scenarios of inelastic Dark Matter evade direct detection by suppressed elastic scattering off atomic nuclei. We introduce inelastic Dirac Dark Matter, a new model with two Dirac fermions in the MeV-GeV mass range. At feeble couplings, dark matter can depart from chemical as well as kinetic equilibrium with the Standard Model before freeze-out. In this case, the freeze-out is driven by conversion processes like coscattering, rather than coannihilation. We show that inelastic Dirac relics are consistent with cos…
Dark matter is one of the biggest open questions in physics today. It is known that it interacts gravitationally with luminous matter, so accelerometer-based searches are inherently interesting. In this article we present recent (and future) searches for dark matter candidates such as feebly interacting matter trapped inside the Earth, scalar-matter domain walls and axion quark nuggets, with accelerometer networks and give an outlook of how new atomic-interferometry-based accelerometer networks could support dark matter searches.
We consider multi-component dark matter in a model where one dark matter component is feebly interacting (FIMP) while the second is weakly interacting (WIMP). The model contains an inert scalar doublet and a complex scalar singlet and features a discrete $Z_4$ symmetry. We determine the parameter space that satisfies theoretical constraints, collider constraints, relic density as well as direct and indirect detection limits. We discuss the possibility to probe the model through collider and astrophysical searches. We find that it is possible that the FIMP forms the dominant DM component, in th…
We study the possibility that Dark Matter (DM) is made of Feebly Interacting Massive Particles (FIMP) interacting just gravitationally with the Standard Model particles in the framework of a Clockwork/Linear Dilaton (CW/LD) model. We restrict here to the case in which the DM particles are scalar fields. This paper extends our previous study of FIMP's in Randall-Sundrum (RS) warped extra-dimensions. As it was the case in the RS scenario, also in the CW/LD model we find a significant region of the parameter space in which the observed DM relic abundance can be reproduced with scalar DM mass in t…
We perform an exclusive study on the Feebly Interacting Massive Particle (FIMP) dark matter candidate in an extended hyperchargeless ($Y=0$) Higgs triplet model. The additional $Z_2$ odd neutral fermion singlet plays the role of dark matter with support from two other vector-like fermion doublets. The mixing between the neutral component of a doublet and singlet fermions controls the current relic density through the Freeze-in mechanism, whereas the additional doublet fermion helps to get the neutrino mass and mixing angles. We obtain a broad region of the parameter spaces satisfying the curre…
We show that an axionlike particle (ALP) naturally implements spontaneous electroweak baryogenesis through a cosmic evolution strongly tied to the electroweak phase transition (EWPT) if it feebly couples to the Higgs field while giving a small contribution to the Higgs boson mass. The observed baryon asymmetry can be generated successfully if the ALP couples strongly enough to the electroweak anomaly. Also interesting is that the ALP contributes to dark matter, and its coupling to a hidden gauge sector makes the relic abundance insensitive to the cosmic history before the EWPT. The ALP explain…
Feebly Interacting Particles (FIPs) might offer the solution to (some of) the open questions beyond the Standard Models of particle physics and cosmology. At DESY in Hamburg, three non-accelerator-based experiments will search for FIPs as dark matter candidates (ALPS II, BabyIAXO) or constituting the dark matter in our home galaxy (MADMAX).
We consider an effective field theory framework with three standard model (SM) gauge singlet right handed neutrinos, and an additional SM gauge singlet scalar field. The framework successfully generates eV masses of the light neutrinos via seesaw mechanism, and accommodates a feebly interacting massive particle (FIMP) as dark matter candidate. Two of the gauge singlet neutrinos participate in neutrino mass generation, while the third gauge singlet neutrino is a FIMP dark matter. We explore the correlation between the $\textit{vev}$ of the gauge singlet scalar field which translates as mass of …
We present a class of dark matter models, in which the dark matter particle is a feebly interacting massive particle (FIMP) produced via the decay of an electrically charged and/or colored parent particle. Given the feeble interaction, dark matter is produced via the freeze-in mechanism and the parent particle is long-lived. The latter leads to interesting collider signatures. We study current LHC constrains on our models arising from searches for heavy charged particles, disappearing tracks, displaced leptons and displaced vertices. We demonstrate not only that collider searches can be a powe…
We explore the emissions of the Gravitational Waves (GWs) from a strong first-order ekectroweak phase transition. To this end, a dark matter model has been investigated in Feebly Interacting Massive Particle (FIMP) scenario, where the dark matter particles are produced through "freeze-in" mechanism in the early Universe and due to their very small couplings they could not attain thermal and chemical equilibrium with the Universe's thermal plasma. In this context, we extend scalar sector of Standard Model of particle physics by two additional scalar singlets whose stability is protected by an u…
