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Nonthermal Heavy Dark Matter from a First-Order Phase Transition

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arxiv 2403.03252 v2 pith:43CL74OH submitted 2024-03-05 hep-ph astro-ph.CO

Nonthermal Heavy Dark Matter from a First-Order Phase Transition

classification hep-ph astro-ph.CO
keywords darkmatterphasebubblefirst-orderscaletransitionabove
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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We study nonthermal production of heavy dark matter from the dynamics of the background scalar field during a first-order phase transition, predominantly from bubble collisions. In scenarios where bubble walls achieve runaway behavior and get boosted to very high energies, we find that it is possible to produce dark matter with mass several orders of magnitude above the symmetry breaking scale or the highest temperature ever reached by the thermal plasma. We also demonstrate that the existing formalism for calculating particle production from bubble dynamics in a first-order phase transition is not gauge invariant, and can lead to spurious results. While a rigorous and complete resolution of this problem is still lacking, we provide a practical prescription for the computation that avoids unphysical contributions and should provide reliable order-of-magnitude estimates of this effect. Furthermore, we point out the importance of three-body decays of the background field excitations into scalars and gauge bosons, which provide the dominant contributions at energy scales above the scale of symmetry breaking. Using our improved results, we find that scalar, fermion, and vector dark matter are all viable across a large range of mass scales, from O(10) TeV to a few orders of magnitude below the Planck scale, and the corresponding phase transitions can be probed with current and future gravitational wave experiments.

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Forward citations

Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Particle production from bubble collisions

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 8.0

    Heavy particles are produced in bubble-wall collisions by on-shell partonic scatterings, not by off-shell decay of the classical field, so the earlier rates and their phenomenological signals are parametrically overestimated.

  2. Can the universe be matter-dominated after a supercooled first-order phase transition?

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 7.0

    After a supercooled first-order phase transition, the scalar field's equation of state is set by the bubble-wall Lorentz factor γ*, and matter domination is delayed until a/a* ≃ γ* in the free-streaming limit.

  3. Particle productions during collisions of highly boosted bubble walls

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 7.0

    Bubble-wall collisions produce ultra-heavy particles with a universal spectrum ∝ [V'(2vφ)]²/χ⁴, localized at the collision instant.

  4. Cosmic Collider Gravitational Waves sourced by Right-handed Neutrino production from Bubbles: Testing Seesaw, Leptogenesis and Dark Matter

    astro-ph.CO 2026-01 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Bubble collisions in a seesaw model produce right-handed neutrinos that source novel gravitational waves detectable by LISA, ET, and LVK while allowing the lightest RHN to explain dark matter or enable leptogenesis.

  5. Particle Production via Rippled Bubble Walls

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    A rippled bubble wall produces heavy particles resonantly when the momentum transfer matches the ripple frequency, potentially raising dark-matter abundance by orders of magnitude.

  6. Dynamical evolution of the pressure on the bubble wall

    hep-ph 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Dynamical LTE simulations reveal that heating wave formation often outlasts wall acceleration, yielding a revised maximal driving pressure criterion that weakens hydrodynamic obstruction compared to steady-state models.

  7. Dark Matter Production from Bubble Collisions during a First-Order Phase Transition at the End of Inflation

    hep-ph 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Bubble collisions during a first-order phase transition at the end of inflation can generate the observed dark matter abundance in a restricted region of parameter space via direct production and spectator decays.