Dark Matter from Freeze-In via the Neutrino Portal

Abstract

We investigate a minimal neutrino portal dark matter (DM) model where a right-handed neutrino both generates the observed neutrino masses and mediates between the SM and the dark sector, which consists of a fermion and a boson. In contrast to earlier work, we explore regions of the parameter space where DM is produced via freeze-in instead of freeze-out motivated by the small neutrino Yukawa couplings in case of $\mathcal{O}\left(\mathrm{TeV}\right)$ heavy neutrinos. \\ For a non-resonant production of DM, its energy density is independent of the DM mass. Assuming a democratic coupling structure we find $M_N\approx 10\mathrm{TeV}$. For the resonant production of DM, we find that it can be produced via freeze-in or freeze-out even with couplings of $\mathcal{O}\left(10^{-5}\right)$. However, the measurement of the Lyman-$\hat{I}\pm$ forest rules out the feeble coupled freeze-out case completely, while the resonant freeze-in production is only viable for $m_{DM}\gtrsim 3\mathring{keV}$.

19 pages + appendices, 7 figures