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Abstract Dark matter freeze-in is a compelling cosmological production mechanism in which all or some of the observed abundance of dark matter is generated through feeble interactions it has with the Standard Model. In this work we present the first analysis of freeze-in dark matter fluctuations and consider two benchmark models: freeze-in through the direct decay of a heavy vector boson and freeze-in through pair annihilation of Standard Model particles in the thermal bath. We provide a theoretical framework for determining the impact of freeze-in on curvature and dark matter isocurvature perturbations. We determine freeze-in dark matter fluid properties from first principles, tracking its evolution from its relativistic production to its final cold state, and calculate the evolution of the dark matter isocurvature perturbation. We find that in the absence of initial isocurvature, the freeze-in production of dark matter does not source isocurvature. However, for an initial isocurvature perturbation seeded by inflation, the nonthermal freeze-in process may allow for a fraction of the isocurvature to persist, in contrast to the exponential suppression it receives in the case of thermal dark matter. In either case, the evolution of the curvature mode is unaffected by the freeze-in process. We show sensitivity projections of future cosmic microwave background experiments to the amplitude of uncorrelated, totally anticorrelated, and totally correlated dark matter isocurvature perturbations. From these projections, we infer the sensitivity to the abundance of freeze-in dark matter that sustains some fraction of the primordial isocurvature.
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Freeze-in dark matter perturbations are adiabatic
Abstract We show that the large-scale perturbations in the dark matter generated by the freeze-in mechanism are only of adiabatic nature. The freeze-in mechanism is not at odds with the current stringent constraints on isocurvature perturbations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2014215
- PAR ID:
- 10477539
- Publisher / Repository:
- IOP Publishing
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
- Volume:
- 2023
- Issue:
- 01
- ISSN:
- 1475-7516
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 020
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2023/01/020
