Speaker
Barmak Shams Es Haghi
(University of Texas at Austin)
Description
We investigate the influence of the reheating temperature of the visible sector on the freeze-in dark matter (DM) benchmark model for direct detection experiments, where DM production is mediated by an ultralight dark photon. Here we consider a new regime for this benchmark: we take the initial temperature of the thermal Standard Model (SM) bath to be below the DM mass. Then the production rate from the SM bath is drastically reduced due to Boltzmann suppression, necessitating a significant increase in the portal coupling to match the observed relic DM abundance. This enhancement in coupling strength increases the predicted DM-electron scattering cross section, making DM more accessible to current direct detection experiments.
Authors
Barmak Shams Es Haghi
(University of Texas at Austin)
Gabriele Montefalcone
(University of Texas at Austin)
Katherine Freese
Prof.
Kimberly Boddy
(University of Texas at Austin)
