Cosmological Constraints on Very Dark Photons

Abstract

We explore the cosmological consequences of kinetically mixed dark photons with a mass between 1 MeV and 10 GeV, and an effective electromagnetic fine structure constant as small as $10^{-38}$. We calculate the freeze-in abundance of these dark photons in the early Universe and explore the impact of late decays on BBN and the CMB. This leads to new constraints on the parameter space of mass $m_V$ vs kinetic mixing parameter $\kappa$.

14 pages, 11 figures, references added

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Cited by in corpus (16)

• The Dawn of FIMP Dark Matter: A Review of Models and Constraints
• Cosmology With a Very Light $L_{\mu }-L_{\tau }$ Gauge Boson
• Cosmological beam dump: constraints on dark scalars mixed with the Higgs boson
• A loophole to the universal photon spectrum in electromagnetic cascades: application to the "cosmological lithium problem"
• Dark Matter Abundance from Sequential Freeze-in Mechanism
• 511 keV line constraints on feebly interacting particles from supernovae
• The Spectrum of Darkonium in the Sun
• Insights into neutrino decoupling gleaned from considerations of the role of electron mass
• Cosmological Bounds on sub-GeV Dark Vector Bosons from Electromagnetic Energy Injection
• Dark Matter Decaying into Millicharged Particles as a Solution to AMS 02 Positron Excess
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and Neutrino Cosmology
• Constraining dark photon properties with Asteroseismology
• Self-interacting dark matter as a solution to the problems in small-scale structures
• Hidden photons with Kaluza-Klein towers
• Producing and constraining self-interacting hidden sector dark matter
• Nucleosynthesis constraints on the faint vector portal