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A Bound on Light Dark Photon Dark Matter

4 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

4 Pith papers citing it
abstract

We derive a bound on dark photon dark matter scenarios where the dark photon mass is generated through the Higgs mechanism, based on the requirement that symmetry breaking must occur sufficiently early in the universe. We emphasize that dark photon production occurs successfully when the dark Higgs field remains in the symmetric phase due to non-thermal trapping effects. For renormalizable Higgs potentials, our bound reads $$\frac{m_{\gamma'}}{q_H e_H}\;\gg \;60\,{\rm eV}\left(\frac{2\pi}{\lambda}\right)^{1/4}$$ where $m_{\gamma'}$ is the dark photon mass, $e_H$ is the gauge coupling, $q_H$ is the charge of the dark Higgs boson, and $\lambda$ is the Higgs quartic coupling}. This constraint holds independently of any complications arising from the Schwinger effect and vortex formation in the Higgsed phase. For more general Higgs potentials such as the Coleman-Weinberg type potential, our bound yields different forms. We argue that late-time symmetry breaking of the dark U(1) symmetry satisfying our bound has only a mild impact on both the abundance and momentum distribution of dark photon dark matter, and therefore does not pose any serious problem for the dark photon dark matter scenario.

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fields

hep-ph 4

years

2026 3 2025 1

roles

background 2

polarities

background 1 unclear 1

representative citing papers

CMB Test of the Higgs Origin of Dark-Photon Dark Matter

hep-ph · 2026-06-28 · unverdicted · novelty 7.0

CMB isocurvature distinguishes Higgsed dark-photon DM production histories via a model-independent response formalism, requiring q_eff >=2 and initial displacements >3.5e4 H_* for perturbative full-abundance cases.

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