Non-thermal production of heavy vector dark matter from relativistic bubble walls

Abstract

Heavy vector boson dark matter at the TeV scale or higher may be produced non-thermally in a first-order phase transition taking place at a lower energy scale. While the production of vector dark matter has previously been studied for bubble wall collisions, here we calculate production by bubble wall expansion in a plasma, which can be the dominant production mechanism. We compute the results numerically and provide an analytical fit for the vector dark matter density. The numerical fit is also validated for scalar dark matter production, obtaining results in agreement with past literature. We find that vector pair production leads to bubble wall friction with a novel boost factor scaling behaviour compared to transition radiation emission of a single vector. We conclude that TeV-scale WIMP vector dark matter can be efficiently produced non-thermally by first-order phase transitions in a wide region of parameter space where thermal freeze-out is inefficient. In this scenario, the phase transition scale is predicted to be in the sub-GeV to $\mathcal{O}(10)$ TeV range and could therefore be accessible to future gravitational wave detectors.

43 pages, 14 figures; v2: added discussions on the unitarity issue, including a new subsection (Sec. 4.2), a new figure (Fig. 7), and a few comments, refs updated, matches version accepted in JHEP; v3: typos in Eqs. (60), (61) corrected

References in corpus (43)

• Advanced LIGO
• Gauge Singlet Scalars as Cold Dark Matter
• Gravitational Wave Production by Collisions: More Bubbles
• The Dawn of FIMP Dark Matter: A Review of Models and Constraints
• Gravitational Waves from Phase Transitions at the Electroweak Scale and Beyond
• Darkogenesis
• Primordial black hole production during first-order phase transitions
• Towards an all-orders calculation of the electroweak bubble wall velocity
• Friction pressure on relativistic bubble walls
• Bubble wall velocity: heavy physics effects
• Electroweak baryogenesis at high wall velocities
• Fermi-ball dark matter from a first-order phase transition
• Primordial black holes from strong first-order phase transitions
• Bubble wall velocities in local equilibrium
• Primordial Black Holes from Supercooled Phase Transitions
• Maximizing Direct Detection with Highly Interactive Particle Relic Dark Matter
• Baryogenesis and gravity waves from a UV-completed electroweak phase transition
• Model-independent bubble wall velocities in local thermal equilibrium
• String Fragmentation in Supercooled Confinement and Implications for Dark Matter
• Scientific Potential of DECIGO Pathfinder and Testing GR with Space-Borne Gravitational Wave Interferometers
• Primordial black holes from an electroweak phase transition
• The Higgs Portal to Cosmology
• Leptogenesis triggered by a first-order phase transition
• Hydrodynamic obstruction to bubble expansion
• Ultra-relativistic bubbles from the simplest Higgs portal and their cosmological consequences
• Changes in Dark Matter Properties After Freeze-Out
• Magnetic field and gravitational waves from the first-order Phase Transition
• Quantisation Across Bubble Walls and Friction
• Dark Matter and Gravity Waves from a Dark Big Bang
• Recycled Dark Matter
• Spontaneous Freeze Out of Dark Matter From an Early Thermal Phase Transition
• Gravitational wave signals of dark matter freeze-out
• Bubble-wall velocity in local thermal equilibrium: hydrodynamical simulations vs analytical treatment
• Criterion for ultra-fast bubble walls: the impact of hydrodynamic obstruction
• Logarithmically divergent friction on ultrarelativistic bubble walls
• Bounds on the bubble wall velocity
• Magnetogenesis with gravitational waves and primordial black hole dark matter
• Gauged Q-ball dark matter through a cosmological first-order phase transition
• From QFT to Boltzmann: Freeze-in in the presence of oscillating condensates
• Dissipation of oscillating scalar backgrounds in an FLRW universe
• Schwinger effect and false vacuum decay as quantum-mechanical tunneling of a relativistic particle
• On Particle Production from Phase Transition Bubbles
• Fate of homogeneous ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$-symmetric scalar condensates

Cited by in corpus (2)

• High-frequency gravitational waves from first-order phase transitions
• A New Source of Phase Transition Gravitational Waves: Heavy Particle Braking Across Bubble Walls