Antisymmetric tensor portals to dark matter

TL;DR

This paper compares freeze-in and freeze-out dark matter production via an antisymmetric tensor portal, showing they predict different coupling constants and behaviors as functions of dark matter mass.

Contribution

It introduces the use of an antisymmetric tensor portal to analyze dark matter production, highlighting differences in coupling predictions between freeze-in and freeze-out scenarios.

Findings

Freeze-in predicts much smaller couplings, consistent with nonthermalization.

Coupling constants vary significantly with dark matter mass in the two scenarios.

Different behaviors of couplings as functions of mass are observed in freeze-in and freeze-out.

Abstract

Both freeze-in of very weakly coupled dark matter and freeze-out of initially thermalized dark matter from the primordial heat bath provide interesting possibilities for dark matter creation in the early universe. Both scenarios allow for a calculation of baryon-dark matter coupling constants as a function of dark matter mass due to the constraint that freeze-in or freeze-out produce the observed dark matter abundance. Here we compare the resulting coupling constants in the two scenarios if dark matter couples to baryons through an antisymmetric tensor portal. The freeze-in scenario predicts much smaller coupling in agreement with the nonthermalization postulate. We find that the couplings as a function of mass behave very differently in the two scenarios.