Thermal effects on Dark Matter production during cosmic reheating

TL;DR

This paper investigates how thermal effects during cosmic reheating influence Dark Matter production and relic abundance, finding that such effects are usually small but can sometimes be significant.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of thermal corrections to Dark Matter production rates during reheating, highlighting conditions where these effects are negligible or impactful.

Findings

Thermal corrections are generally small in the studied regime.

Counter-examples show thermal effects can sometimes be significant.

Implications for collider observables and CMB constraints are discussed.

Abstract

The relic abundance of Dark Matter (DM) produced via thermal freeze-in is sensitive to the thermal history during and after cosmic reheating. In minimal models, this opens up the possibility to make predictions for collider observables by combining the requirement to match the DM relic abundance with observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We assess the impact of thermal corrections to the rate of cosmic reheating and the rate of thermal DM production on CMB observables and the relic abundance. We find that such corrections are generally small in the regime where they can be computed by means of finite-temperature field theory. We construct counter-examples where this general rule is violated.