Cold light dark matter in extended seesaw models

Abstract

We present a thorough discussion of light dark matter produced via freeze-in in two-body decays A -> B DM. If A and B are quasi-degenerate, the dark matter particle has a cold spectrum even for keV masses. We show this explicitly by calculating the transfer function that encodes the impact on structure formation. As examples for this setup we study extended seesaw mechanisms with a spontaneously broken global U(1) symmetry, such as the inverse seesaw. The keV-scale pseudo-Goldstone dark matter particle is then naturally produced cold by the decays of the quasi-degenerate right-handed neutrinos.

Comments: 16 pages plus appendices, 4 figures; corrected discussion of sub-keV dark matter; matches JCAP version