Gravitational wave as a probe of light feebly interacting dark matter

Abstract

Light feebly interacting dark matter is widely predicted in a plethora of new physics models. However, due to very feeble couplings with the standard-model particles, its relic density produced via the relativistic thermal freeze-out process easily exceeds the observed value. The entropy dilution in an early matter-dominated era provides an attractive mechanism for solving such an overabundance problem. In this work, we note that this dark matter dilution mechanism will lead to two distinctive kinks in the primordial GW spectrum, whose frequencies strongly correlate with the DM mass. We show that the GW detectors, such as Cosmic Explorer (CE) and Big Bang Observer (BBO), can measure the kinks in the primordial GW spectrum and will offer a new avenue to probe light feebly interacting dark matter. Published by the American Physical Society 2024