When Freeze-out occurs due to a non-Boltzmann suppression: A study of degenerate dark sector
Anirban Biswas, Sougata Ganguly, Sourov Roy
备注：
65 pages, 25 figures, 2 tables, additional indirect detection constraints are included, new references are added, conclusion remains unchanged, version matches with the published version in JHEP
Exponential suppression or commonly known as the Boltzmann suppression in the number density of dark matter is the key ingredient for creating chemical imbalance prior to the usual thermal freeze-out. A degenerate/quasi-degenerate dark sector can experience a different exponential suppression in the number density analogous to the radioactive decay law leading to a delayed freeze-out mechanism of dark matter known as the co-decaying dark matter. In this work, we study the dynamics of a multicomponent dark matter from thermally decoupled degenerate dark sector in a hidden U$(1)_{X}$ extension of the Standard Model. We compute the relic density of dark matter frozen-out through the co-decaying mechanism by solving four coupled Boltzmann equations. We demonstrate how temperature $T^\prime $ of the dark sector changes due to all types of $3\rightarrow 2$ and $2\rightarrow 2$ interactions along with the eternal expansion of the Universe. We find that $3\rightarrow 2$ interactions enhance $T^\prime$ by producing energetic particles in the dark sector while the excess heat is transferred by $2\rightarrow 2$ interactions to the entire dark sector. As the direct detection is possible only through the feeble portal couplings, we investigate the neutrino and $γ$-ray signals from dark matter annihilation via one step cascade processes and compare our results with the measured fluxes of atmospheric neutrinos by Super-Kamiokande and diffuse $γ$-rays by Fermi-LAT, EGRET, INTEGRAL collaborations. We find that the present scenario easily evades all the existing bounds from atmospheric neutrino and diffuse $γ$-ray observations for degenerate dark sector. However, the constraints are significant for quasi degenerate scenario.
We study Freeze Out process in high energy heavy ion reaction. The description of the process is based on the Boltzmann Transport Equation (BTE). We point out the basic limitations of the BTE approach and introduce Modified BTE. The Freeze Out dynamics is presented in the 4-dimensional space-time in a layer of finite thickness, and we employ Modified BTE for the realistic Freeze Out description.
Recently several works have appeared in the literature that addressed the problem of Freeze Out in energetic heavy ion reaction and aimed for a description based on the Boltzmann Transport Equation (BTE). In this paper we develop a dynamical Freeze-Out description, starting from the BTE, pointing out the basic limitations of the BTE approach, and the points where the BTE approach should be modified.
We study how the evaporation of primordial black holes (PBHs) can affect the production of dark matter (DM) particles through thermal processes. We consider fermionic DM interacting with Standard Model particles via a spin-1 mediator in the context of a Freeze-Out or Freeze-In mechanism. We show that when PBHs evaporate after dominating the Universe's energy density, PBHs act as a source of DM and continuously inject entropy into the visible sector that can affect the thermal production in three qualitatively different ways. We compute the annihilation cross-sections which account for the inte…
Analysis of cosmic microwave background radiation fluctuations favors an effective number of neutrinos, $N_ν>3$. This motivates a reinvestigation of the neutrino freeze-out process. Here we characterize the dependence of $N_ν$ on the Standard Model (SM) parameters that govern neutrino freeze-out. We show that $N_ν$ depends on a combination $η$ of several natural constants characterizing the relative strength of weak interaction processes in the early Universe and on the Weinberg angle $\sin^2θ_W$. We determine numerically the dependence $N_ν(η,\sin^2θ_W)$ and discuss these results. The extensi…
Two approaches to treat the chemical freeze-out of strange particles in hadron resonance gas model are analyzed. The first one employs their non-equillibration via the usual γ_s factor and such a model describes the hadron multiplicities measured in nucleus-nucleus collisions at AGS, SPS and RHIC energies with χ^2/dof = 1.15. Surprisingly, at low energies we find not the strangeness suppression, but its enhancement. Also we suggest an alternative approach to treat the strange particle freeze-out separately, but with the full chemical equilibration. This approach is based on the conservation la…
We revisit dark-matter production through freeze-in and freeze-out by solving the Boltzmann equations at the level of the phase-space distribution $f(p,t)$. Using the $2\to2$ annihilation and the $1\to2$ decay processes for illustration, we compare the resulting dark-matter relic abundance with that from the number-density approach. In the transition regime between freeze-in and freeze-out, we find the difference can be quite significant, or even by orders of magnitude if the annihilation of dark-matter particles or the decaying mediator is neglected. The freeze-in production in the $2\to2$ an…
In this dissertation, we study the evolution and properties of the relic (or cosmic) neutrino distribution from neutrino freeze-out at $T=O(1)$ MeV through the free-streaming era up to today, focusing on the deviation of the neutrino spectrum from equilibrium. In particular, we demonstrate the presence of chemical non-equilibrium that continues to the present day. The work naturally separates into two parts. The first focuses on aspects of the relic neutrinos that can be explored using conservation laws. The second part studies the neutrino distribution using the full general relativistic Bolt…
The formation and decay of metastable bound states can significantly decrease the thermal-relic dark matter density, particularly for dark matter masses around and above the TeV scale. Incorporating bound-state effects in the dark matter thermal decoupling requires in principle a set of coupled Boltzmann equations for the bound and unbound species. However, decaying bound states attain and remain in a quasi-steady state. Here we prove in generality that this reduces the coupled system into a single Boltzmann equation of the standard form, with an effective cross-section that describes the inte…
The kinetic Freeze Out process of a pion gas through a finite layer with time-like normal is considered. The pion gas is described by a Boltzmann gas with elastic collisions among the pions. Within this model, the impact of the in-medium pion mass modification on the Freeze Out process is studied. A marginal change of the Freeze Out variables temperature and flow velocity and an insignificant modification of the frozen out particle distribution function has been found.
We study the cosmological evolution and phenomenological properties of scalar bosons in the keV to MeV range that have a tiny mixing with the Standard Model Higgs boson. The mixing determines both the abundance of light scalars produced via the freeze-in mechanism and their lifetime. Intriguingly, the parameters required for such scalars to account for all of the dark matter in the present Universe generically predict lifetimes comparable to the sensitivity of present and future indirect detection experiments. In order to accurately determine the relic abundance of light scalars, we calculate …
Radial flow observed at AGS/SPS energies is very strong, with collective velocities of matter reaching about 0.5c for central collisions of the heaviest ions. The lattice-based Equation of State (EOS) is however rather soft, due to the QCD phase transition. We show that both statements are consistent only if proper kinetic-based treatment of the freeze-out is made. In fact chemical and thermal freeze-out happen at quite different conditions, especially at SPS. Event-by-event fluctuations can shed new light on this problem. We also propose new model of "anomalous" $J/ψ$ suppression found for Pb…
Chemical equilibrium is a commonly made assumption in the freeze-out calculation of coannihilating dark matter. We explore the possible failure of this assumption and find a new conversion-driven freeze-out mechanism. Considering a representative simplified model inspired by supersymmetry with a neutralino- and sbottom-like particle we find regions in parameter space with very small couplings accommodating the measured relic density. In this region freeze-out takes place out of chemical equilibrium and dark matter self-annihilation is thoroughly inefficient. The relic density is governed prima…
Feebly Interacting Massive Particles (FIMPs) are dark matter candidates that never thermalize in the early universe and whose production takes place via decays and/or scatterings of thermal bath particles. If FIMPs interactions with the thermal bath are renormalizable, a scenario which is known as freeze-in, production is most efficient at temperatures around the mass of the bath particles and insensitive to unknown physics at high temperatures. Working in a model-independent fashion, we consider three different production mechanisms: two-body decays, three-body decays, and binary collisions. …
Dark matter (DM) freeze-in through a light mediator is an appealing model with excellent detection prospects at current and future experiments. Light mediator freeze-in is UV-insensitive insofar as most DM is produced at late times, and thus the DM abundance does not depend on the unknown early evolution of our universe. However the final DM yield retains a dependence on the initial DM population, which is usually assumed to be exactly zero. We point out that in models with light mediators, the final DM yield will also depend on the initial conditions assumed for the light mediator population.…
The supersymmetrized DFSZ axion model is highly motivated not only because it offers solutions to both the gauge hierarchy and strong CP problems, but also because it provides a solution to the SUSY mu problem which naturally allows for a Little Hierarchy. We compute the expected mixed axion-neutralino dark matter abundance for the SUSY DFSZ axion model in two benchmark cases-- a natural SUSY model with a standard neutralino underabundance (SUA) and an mSUGRA/CMSSM model with a standard overabundance (SOA). Our computation implements coupled Boltzmann equations which track the radiation densit…
Yields, rapidity and transverse momentum spectra of $Δ^{++}(1232)$, $Λ(1520)$, $Σ^\pm(1385)$ and the meson resonances $K^0(892)$, $Φ$, $ρ^0$ and $f_0(980)$ are predicted. Hadronic rescattering leads to a suppression of reconstructable resonances, especially at low $p_\perp$. A mass shift of the $ρ$ of 10 MeV is obtained from the microscopic simulation, due to late stage $ρ$ formation in the cooling pion gas.
We used the blast wave model with Boltzmann Gibbs statistics and analyzed the experimental data measured by NA61/SHINE Collaboration in inelastic (INEL) proton-proton collisions at different rapidity slices at different center-of-mass energies. The particles used in this study are pion, kaon, proton and anti-proton. We extracted kinetic freeze-out temperature, transverse flow velocity and kinetic freeze-out volume from the transverse momentum spectra of the particles. We observed that the kinetic freeze-out temperature is rapidity and energy dependent, while transverse flow velocity does not d…
In the last few years there has been some interest in WIMP Dark Matter models featuring a velocity dependent cross section through the Sommerfeld enhancement mechanism, which is a nonrelativistic effect due to massive bosons in the dark sector. In the first part of this article, we find analytic expressions for the boost factor for three different model potentials, the Coulomb potential, the spherical well and the spherical cone well and compare with the numerical solution of the Yukawa potential. We find that the resonance pattern of all the potentials can be cast into the same universal form…
We present a new paradigm of dark matter freeze-out, where the annihilation of dark matter particles is catalyzed. We discuss in detail the regime that the depletion of dark matter proceeds via $2χ\to 2A'$ and $3A' \to 2χ$ processes, in which $χ$ and $A'$ denote dark matter and the catalyst respectively. In this regime, the dark matter number density is depleted polynomially rather than exponentially (Boltzmann suppression) as in classic WIMPs and SIMPs. The paradigm applies for a secluded weakly interacting dark sector with a dark matter in the $\text{MeV-TeV}$ mass range. The catalyzed annih…
KEK Theory Center, IPNS, KEK（高能加速器研究机构理论中心，粒子核物理研究部）；Graduate Institute for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI（综合研究大学院大学高等研究院）；Department of Physics, The University of Osaka（大阪大学物理学系）
Inspired by our recent paper "reshuffled SIMP dark matter", we notice that the reaction rate of the two-loop induced $2 \to 2$ process may dominate over or be comparable with that of the $3 \to 2$ process at the chemical freezeout of Co-SIMP dark matter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 131301 (2020)], especially when the Co-SIMP mass is close to the standard model particle mass (called the edge case). To check our point, we then derive the Boltzmann equation with all relevant annihilation cross sections in an electrophilic model and numerically solve it to obtain the cosmological evolution of Co-SIMP da…
A new method for evaluating spectra and correlations in the hydrodynamic approach is proposed. It is based on an analysis of Boltzmann equations (BE) in terms of probabilities for constituent particles to escape from the interacting system. The conditions of applicability of Cooper-Frye freeze-out prescription are considered within the method. The results are illustrated with a non-relativistic exact solution of BE for expanding spherical fireball as well as with approximate solutions for ellipsoidally expanding ones.
Warm fermionic dark matter from freeze-in at stronger coupling
Departamento de Física da Universidade de Aveiro（阿威罗大学物理系）；Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas (LIP), Universidade do Minho（米尼奥大学粒子物理实验仪器实验室）
Recently several works have appeared in the literature in which authors try to describe Freeze Out (FO) in energetic heavy ion collisions based on the Boltzmann Transport Equation (BTE). The aim of this work is to point out the limitations of the BTE, when applied for the modeling of FO or other very fast process, and to propose the way how the BTE approach can be generalized for such a processes.
Based on the data-driven analysis, the mid-rapidity transverse momentum spectra of charged hadrons produced in central and peripheral gold-gold (Au-Au) collisions from the Beam Energy Scan (BES) program at the relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are fitted by the blast-wave model with Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics. The model result are in agreement with the experimental data measured by the STAR Collaboration at the RHIC-BES energies. We observe that the kinetic freeze-out temperature, transverse flow velocity, mean transverse momentum, and initial temperature increase with the collision energ…
The nature of dark matter (DM) and how it might interact with the particles of the Standard Model (SM) is one of greatest mysteries currently facing particle physics, and addressing these issues should provide some understanding of how the observed relic abundance was produced. One widely considered production mechanism, a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) produced as a thermal relic, provides a target cross section for DM annihilation into SM particles by solving the Boltzmann equation. In this thermal freeze-out mechanism, dark matter is produced in thermal equilibrium with the SM i…
A new way to overcome the $Λ$ hyperon selective suppression, which is known as the $Λ$-anomaly, has been suggested. In particular, the additional radius of a $Λ$ hyperon is introduced into the model of hadron resonance gas with the multicomponent hard-core repulsion. The proposed approach allows one to describe the hadron multiplicity ratios measured at the AGS, SPS and RHIC energies with the accuracy $χ^{2}/dof=$52/55$\simeq $0.95.
We propose an elaborate version of the hadron resonance gas model with the combined treatment of separate chemical freeze-outs for strange and non-strange hadrons and with an additional γ_{s} factor which accounts for the remaining strange particle non-equilibration. Two sets of chemical freeze-outs parameters are connected by the conservation laws of entropy, baryonic charge, isospin projection and strangeness. The developed approach enables us to perform a high-quality fit of the hadron multiplicity ratios for AGS, SPS and RHIC energies with total χ^2/dof \simeq 1.05. A special attention is …
Matsumoto and Yoshimura have recently argued that the number density of heavy particles in a thermal bath is not necessarily Boltzmann-suppressed for T << M, as power law corrections may emerge at higher orders in perturbation theory. This fact might have important implications on the determination of WIMP relic densities. On the other hand, the definition of number densities in a interacting theory is not a straightforward procedure. It usually requires renormalization of composite operators and operator mixing, which obscure the physical interpretation of the computed thermal average. We pro…
We derive the non-equilibrium single-particle momentum distribution function of a hadron resonance gas. We then study the effects that this newly derived expression can have in the freeze-out description of fluid-dynamical models of heavy ion collisions and compare it with the method traditionally employed, the 14-moment approximation.
We consider freeze-in production of 7 keV axino dark matter (DM) in the supersymmetric Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky (DFSZ) model in light of the 3.5 keV line excess. The warmness of such 7 keV DM produced from the thermal bath, in general, appears in tension with Ly-$α$ forest data, although a direct comparison is not straightforward. This is because the Ly-$α$ forest constraints are usually reported on the mass of the conventional warm dark matter (WDM), where large entropy production is implicitly assumed to occur in the thermal bath after WDM particles decouple. The phase space distri…
We present a major upgrade of the micrOMEGAs dark matter code to compute the abundance of feebly interacting dark matter candidates through the freeze-in mechanism in generic extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. We develop the necessary formalism in order to solve the freeze-in Boltzmann equations while making as few simplifying assumptions as possible concerning the phase-space distributions of the particles involved in the dark matter production process. We further show that this formalism allows us to treat different freeze-in scenarios and discuss the way it is implemented…
We study the effects of modifying the expansions history of the Universe on Dark Matter freezeout. We derived a modified Boltzmann equation for freeze-out for an arbitrary energy density in the early Universe and provide an analytic approach using some approximations. We then look at the required thermally averaged cross sections needed to obtain the correct relic density for the specific case where the energy density consists of radiation plus one extra component which cools faster. We compare our analytic approximation to a numerical solutions. We find that it gives reasonable results for mo…
A hybrid transport approach for the bulk evolution of viscous QCD matter produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions is presented. The expansion of the dense deconfined phase of the reaction is modeled with viscous hydrodynamics while the dilute late hadron gas stage is described microscopically by the Boltzmann equation. The advantages of such a hybrid approach lie in the improved capability of handling large dissipative corrections in the late dilute phase of the reaction, including a realistic treatment of the non-equilibrium hadronic chemistry and kinetic freeze-out. By varying the…
We examine the thermal evolution of particle number densities in the early universe when the particles have a finite diffusion length. Assuming that annihilations are impossible when the mean separation of the particles is larger than their diffusion length, we derive a version of the Boltzmann equation for freeze out in this scenario and an approximate solution, accurate to better than 2\%. The effect of a finite diffusion length is to increase the final relic freeze-out abundance over its corresponding value when diffusion effects are ignored. When diffusion is limited only by scattering off…
We explore the possibility that dark matter is a pair of vector-like fermionic $\mathrm{SU}(2)_{\rm L}$ doublets and propose a novel mechanism of dark matter production that proceeds through the confinement of the weak sector of the Standard Model. This confinement phase causes the Standard Model doublets and dark matter to confine into pions. The dark pions freeze-out before the weak sector deconfines and generate a relic abundance of dark matter. We solve the Boltzmann equations for this scenario to determine the scale of confinement and constituent dark matter mass required to produce the o…
Transverse momentum spectra of negative and positive pions produced at mid-(pseudo)rapidity in inelastic or non-single-diffractive proton-proton collisions and in central nucleus-nucleus collisions over an energy range from a few GeV to above 10 TeV are analyzed by a (two-component) blast-wave model with Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics and with Tsallis statistics respectively. The model results are in similarly well agreement with the experimental data measured by a few productive collaborations who work at the Heavy Ion Synchrotron (SIS), Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), Relativistic Heavy Ion Coll…
We study the free-streaming effect in a light freeze-in dark matter model. Naturally in the dark sector one can find dark matter related coupling, and such coupling may induce dark matter self-scattering. In case that such scattering is subdominant, the dark matter partition function is not thermal but determined by the freeze-in process, yet its high momentum side is generally also Boltzmann suppressed. We show that the matter power spectrum is very similar to a warm dark matter one in shape. When matched to the current WDM bound, a $24$~keV freeze-in dark matter is ruled out at $2σ$ confiden…
We investigate the freeze-out conditions of a particle in an expanding system of interacting particles in order to understand the productions of resonances, hadronic molecules and light nuclei in heavy ion collisions. Applying the kinetic freeze-out condition with explicit hydrodynamic calculations for the expanding hadronic phase to the daughter particles of $K^*$ mesons, we find that the larger suppression of the yield ratio of $K^*/K$ at LHC than at RHIC compared to the expectations from the statistical hadronization model based on chemical freeze-out parameters reflects the lower kinetic f…
We analyse the transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$)-spectra as a function of charged-particle multiplicity at midrapidity ($|y| < 0.5$) for various identified particles such as $π^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, $K_S^0$, $p+\overline{p}$, $ϕ$, $K^{*0} + \overline {K^{*0}}$, and $Λ$ + $\barΛ$ in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV using Boltzmann-Gibbs Blast Wave (BGBW) model and thermodynamically consistent Tsallis distribution function. We obtain the multiplicity dependent kinetic freeze-out temperature ($T_{\rm kin}$) and radial flow ($β$) of various particles after fitting the $p_{\rm T}$-distri…
We investigate fluid-to-particle conversion using the usual Cooper-Frye approach but with more general local equilibrium distributions than the Boltzmann or Bose/Fermi distributions typically used. Even though we study ideal fluids (i.e., shear stress and bulk pressure are zero everywhere), we find a suppression of elliptic flow (v2) at high transverse momenta (pT>1.5 GeV/c), relative to results obtained with the traditional Boltzmann distributions. The non-viscous suppression shows qualitatively similar features to the well-known shear viscous suppression of v2; for example, it increases with…
