WISPy Cold Dark Matter
Jan, 2012
29 pages
Published in:
- JCAP 06 (2012) 013
e-Print:
- 1201.5902 [hep-ph]
Report number:
- DESY-11-226,
- MPP-2011-140,
- CERN-PH-TH-2011-323,
- IPPP-11-80,
- DCPT-11-160
View in:
Citations per year
Abstract: (arXiv)
Very weakly interacting slim particles (WISPs), such as axion-like particles (ALPs) or hidden photons (HPs), may be non-thermally produced via the misalignment mechanism in the early universe and survive as a cold dark matter population until today. We find that, both for ALPs and HPs whose dominant interactions with the standard model arise from couplings to photons, a huge region in the parameter spaces spanned by photon coupling and ALP or HP mass can give rise to the observed cold dark matter. Remarkably, a large region of this parameter space coincides with that predicted in well motivated models of fundamental physics. A wide range of experimental searches -- exploiting haloscopes (direct dark matter searches exploiting microwave cavities), helioscopes (searches for solar ALPs or HPs), or light-shining-through-a-wall techniques -- can probe large parts of this parameter space in the foreseeable future.Note:
- v2: Labels of figure 2 corrected, new text in section 4 added, 29 pages, 4 figures. Final version accepted for publication in JCAP
- photon: coupling
- photon: hidden sector
- cavity: microwaves
- dark matter
- WISP
- axion
References(98)
Figures(5)