New dark matter production mechanism and the gravitational wave signals

TL;DR

This paper investigates new non-thermal dark matter production mechanisms involving early-universe phenomena and demonstrates their potential to generate detectable gravitational wave signals, offering novel insights into dark matter origins.

Contribution

It introduces novel dark matter production channels linked to early-universe events and connects these mechanisms to observable gravitational wave signals.

Findings

Certain production mechanisms produce gravitational waves detectable by future observatories.

New non-thermal dark matter candidates can be generated through early-universe phenomena.

Multi-messenger signals can help distinguish dark matter origins.

Abstract

The microscopic origin and production mechanism of dark matter (DM) remain central questions in cosmology and particle physics. While thermal freeze-out has long dominated DM model building, alternative non-thermal scenarios are gaining prominence. In this work, we explore novel production channels for heavy DM candidates, including pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons (pNGBs), Q-balls, and filtered DM arising from early-universe phenomena such as primordial black hole (PBH) evaporation, superradiance, and first-order phase transitions. We demonstrate that these mechanisms naturally generate gravitational wave signals detectable by future observatories, such as LISA, TianQin, Taiji, and Cosmic Explorer. This multi-messenger approach offers a promising pathway to probe the origin and nature of DM beyond conventional paradigms.