Freeze-in dark matter in EDGES 21-cm signal

Abstract

The first measurement on temperature of hydrogen 21-cm signal reported by EDGES strongly favors Coulomb-like interaction between freeze-in dark matter and baryon fluid. We investigate such dark matter both in one- and two-component context, with the light force carrier(s) essential for the Coulomb-like interaction not being photon. Using a conversion of cross sections used by relevant experiments and Boltzmann equations to encode effects of the dark matter-baryon interaction, we show that both cases are robustly excluded by the stringent stellar cooling bounds in the sub-GeV dark matter mass range. The exclusion of one-component case applies to simplified freeze-in dark matter with the light force carrier as dark photon, gauged $B-L$, $L_e-L_{\mu }$,$L_e-L_{\tau }$ or axion-like particle, while the exclusion of two-component case applies to simplified freeze-in dark matter with the two light force carriers as two axion-like particles coupled to standard model quarks and leptons respectively.

v2: journal version with changed title and added references

References in corpus (9)

• Secluded WIMP Dark Matter
• Stellar cooling bounds on new light particles: plasma mixing effects
• SENSEI: Direct-Detection Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Shallow Underground Run Using a Prototype Skipper-CCD
• Limits on spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon cross section obtained from the complete LUX exposure
• Unbroken B-L Symmetry
• The Effects of Dark Matter-Baryon Scattering on Redshifted 21 cm Signals
• Direct millicharged dark matter cannot explain EDGES
• A cosmologically consistent millicharged dark matter solution to the EDGES anomaly of possible string theory origin
• Two-component millicharged dark matter and the EDGES 21cm signal

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Particle physics and cosmology intertwined