Electroweak SU(2)_L doublet fermion dark matter with mass above 10^10 GeV (or 300 GeV if pseudo-Dirac) is produced by Boltzmann-suppressed freeze-in above the reheat temperature and evades direct detection while never thermalizing.
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Largest temperature of the radiation era and its cosmological implications
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abstract
The thermal history of the universe before the epoch of nucleosynthesis is unknown. The maximum temperature in the radiation-dominated era, which we will refer to as the reheat temperature, may have been as low as 0.7 MeV. In this paper we show that a low reheat temperature has important implications for many topics in cosmology. We show that weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) may be produced even if the reheat temperature is much smaller than the freeze-out temperature of the WIMP, and that the dependence of the present abundance on the mass and the annihilation cross section of the WIMP differs drastically from familiar results. We revisit predictions of the relic abundance and resulting model constraints of supersymmetric dark matter, axions, massive neutrinos, and other dark matter candidates, nucleosynthesis constraints on decaying particles, and leptogenesis by decay of superheavy particles. We find that the allowed parameter space of supersymmetric models is altered, removing the usual bounds on the mass spectrum; the cosmological bound on massive neutrinos is drastically changed, ruling out Dirac (Majorana) neutrino masses $m_\nu$ only in the range 33 keV $\simlt m_\nu\simlt$ 6 (5) MeV, which is significantly smaller from the the standard disallowed range 94 eV $\simlt m_\nu\simlt$ 2 GeV (this implies that massive neutrinos may still play the role of either warm or cold dark matter); the cosmological upper bound on the Peccei-Quinn scale may be significantly increased to $ 10^{16}$GeV from the usually cited limit of about $10^{12}$GeV; and that efficient out-of-equilibrium GUT baryogenesis and/or leptogenesis can take place even if the reheat temperature is much smaller than the mass of the decaying superheavy particle.
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2026 10representative citing papers
Inflaton accretion during reheating drives non-linear PBH mass growth that extends lifetimes and amplifies emitted SGWB by multiple orders of magnitude.
Freeze-in at low reheating temperatures allows MeV-scale dark matter in vector portal models to be probed by future direct detection experiments in nuclear recoils for 50-500 MeV masses and via enhanced solar neutrino coherent scattering.
Constraints on temperature-dependent CPT-violating electron-positron mass asymmetry b0(T) = α T² from BBN abundances of 4He, D, and Neff give α ≳ 10^{-6} GeV^{-1} for keV-scale effects at BBN.
Ultrarelativistically decoupling dark matter in Z' portal models has direct detection cross sections that existing experiments like LZ and XENONnT have already excluded over large regions, leaving testable space above the neutrino fog for 0.4 GeV to 1 TeV masses.
A spectator scalar field with strong portal coupling to the inflaton sources a stochastic gravitational wave background reaching Ω_GW h² ∼ 10^{-11} at frequencies 10^7-10^8 Hz for benchmark parameters σ/λ ≃ 10^4 and T_reh = 2×10^{14} GeV.
Thermal corrections to reheating and freeze-in DM production rates are generally small in the computable regime but can be large in constructed counter-examples.
A non-thermally produced WIMP decays in an early matter-dominated universe to generate both baryon asymmetry and dark matter with collider-detectable masses.
Multi-phase non-minimal inflation in metric and Palatini gravity predicts ns between 0.93 and 0.98, r up to 0.03 in metric but below 10^{-5} in Palatini, with non-thermal DM and leptogenesis viable for couplings in the 10^{-7} to 10^{-3} range.
citing papers explorer
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Minimal Freeze-in Dark Matter: Reviving electroweak doublet dark matter with Boltzmann suppressed freeze-in
Electroweak SU(2)_L doublet fermion dark matter with mass above 10^10 GeV (or 300 GeV if pseudo-Dirac) is produced by Boltzmann-suppressed freeze-in above the reheat temperature and evades direct detection while never thermalizing.
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Inflaton Accretion onto Primordial Black Holes During Reheating
Inflaton accretion during reheating drives non-linear PBH mass growth that extends lifetimes and amplifies emitted SGWB by multiple orders of magnitude.
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New benchmarks for direct detection of freeze-in dark matter in vector portal models
Freeze-in at low reheating temperatures allows MeV-scale dark matter in vector portal models to be probed by future direct detection experiments in nuclear recoils for 50-500 MeV masses and via enhanced solar neutrino coherent scattering.
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Temperature-Dependent CPT Violation: Constraints from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
Constraints on temperature-dependent CPT-violating electron-positron mass asymmetry b0(T) = α T² from BBN abundances of 4He, D, and Neff give α ≳ 10^{-6} GeV^{-1} for keV-scale effects at BBN.
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Searching for UFOs from the early universe: direct detection prospects for relativistically decoupling dark matter
Ultrarelativistically decoupling dark matter in Z' portal models has direct detection cross sections that existing experiments like LZ and XENONnT have already excluded over large regions, leaving testable space above the neutrino fog for 0.4 GeV to 1 TeV masses.
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Gravitational Waves from Matter Perturbations of Spectator Scalar Fields
A spectator scalar field with strong portal coupling to the inflaton sources a stochastic gravitational wave background reaching Ω_GW h² ∼ 10^{-11} at frequencies 10^7-10^8 Hz for benchmark parameters σ/λ ≃ 10^4 and T_reh = 2×10^{14} GeV.
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Thermal effects on Dark Matter production during cosmic reheating
Thermal corrections to reheating and freeze-in DM production rates are generally small in the computable regime but can be large in constructed counter-examples.
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Baryogenesis and Dark Matter from non-thermally produced WIMPs
A non-thermally produced WIMP decays in an early matter-dominated universe to generate both baryon asymmetry and dark matter with collider-detectable masses.
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Induced Multi-phase Inflation with Reheating: Leptogenesis and Dark Matter Production in Metric versus Palatini
Multi-phase non-minimal inflation in metric and Palatini gravity predicts ns between 0.93 and 0.98, r up to 0.03 in metric but below 10^{-5} in Palatini, with non-thermal DM and leptogenesis viable for couplings in the 10^{-7} to 10^{-3} range.
- Isocurvature-Free QCD Axion Dark Matter from Inflaton-Driven Early QCD: the Necessity of Inflationary Plateaus