TY  - JOUR
AU  - McDermott, S. D.
AU  - Witte, S. J.
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020//
TI  - Cosmological evolution of light dark photon dark matter
T2  - Phys. Rev. D
JO  - Physical Review D
SP  - 063030
EP  - 14pp
VL  - 101
IS  - 6
PB  - Amer Physical Soc
AB  - Light dark photons are subject to various plasma effects, such as Debye screening and resonant oscillations, which can lead to a more complex cosmological evolution than is experienced by conventional cold dark matter candidates. Maintaining a consistent history of dark photon dark matter requires ensuring that the superthennal abundance present in the early Universe (i) does not deviate significantly after the formation of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and (ii) does not excessively leak into the Standard Model plasma after big band nucleosynthesis (BBN). We point out that the role of nonresonant absorption, which has previously been neglected in cosmological studies of this dark matter candidate, produces strong constraints on dark photon dark matter with mass as low as 10(-22) eV. Furthermore, we show that resonant conversion of dark photons after recombination can produce excessive heating of the intergalactic medium (IGM) which is capable of prematurely reionizing hydrogen and helium, leaving a distinct imprint on both the Ly-a forest and the integrated optical depth of the CMB. Our constraints surpass existing cosmological bounds by more than 5 orders of magnitude across a wide range of dark photon masses.
SN  - 2470-0010
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.05086
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.101.063030
DO  - 10.1103/PhysRevD.101.063030
LA  - English
N1  - WOS:000522168800002
ID  - McDermott+Witte2020
ER  -