Dark Sector extensions of the Littlest Seesaw in the presence of Primordial Black Holes

TL;DR

This paper explores how primordial black holes influence dark matter production in an extended Littlest Seesaw model, revealing that black hole evaporation and non-standard cosmology significantly alter relic abundance depending on dark matter mass.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of dark matter production via black hole evaporation within an extended Littlest Seesaw framework under freeze-in conditions.

Findings

Black hole evaporation can dominate dark matter relics at high masses.

Non-standard cosmology modifies freeze-in production of dark matter.

Relic abundance depends on the universe's black hole dominance period.

Abstract

The Littlest Seesaw model is a very well motivated dark matter model. Here we consider an extension of that model with an additional scalar and an additional fermionic particle under the freeze-in scenario. Formation of black hole of a certain mass range at primordial times can act as an alternate production mechanism for the dark matter particles as it evaporates via Hawking radiation. Furthermore, the presence of primordial black holes with substantial energy density gives rise to non-standard cosmology which also modifies the freeze-in production. In this paper, we have investigated the extended Littlest Seesaw model under the freeze-in scenario in the presence of a primordial black hole for various interesting cases and constrained the parameter space accordingly. If the universe is primordial black hole dominated at any point in the evolution of the universe, we find that the final relic in that case is dominated mostly by the evaporation component for a high dark matter mass and by the freeze-in component for a low dark matter mass.