Freezing-in hadrophilic dark matter at low reheating temperatures

TL;DR

This paper investigates a scenario where low reheating temperatures after inflation lead to hadrophilic dark matter with large direct detection cross sections, potentially observable in upcoming experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a model of hadrophilic dark matter produced via ultraviolet freeze-in at low reheating temperatures, analyzing how non-instantaneous reheating affects detection prospects.

Findings

Dark matter-nucleon cross sections are within reach of near-future experiments.

Reheating dynamics significantly influence dark matter detection signals.

Low reheating temperatures enable detectable hadrophilic dark matter in the 100 keV-100 MeV mass range.

Abstract

If the reheating temperature at the end of inflation is low, of order 10 MeV, then dark matter produced through ultraviolet freeze-in has a large direct detection cross section. We study such a scenario in which dark matter is hadrophilic. This leads to dark matter-nucleon scattering cross sections of interest for near-future experiments for dark matter masses in the range of 100 keV-100 MeV. We explore how these predictions vary if reheating is non-instantaneous.