Gravitational Production of Hidden Photon Dark Matter in Light of the XENON1T Excess

Abstract

Recently, the XENON1T experiment has reported an excess in the electronic recoil events. The excess is consistent with the interpretation of absorption of 3keV bosonic dark matter, for example, hidden photon dark matter with kinetic mixing of the order of $10^{-15}$. We point out that the minimally gravitational production provides a viable mechanism for obtaining a correct relic hidden photon abundance. We present parameter dependence of the hidden photon dark matter abundance on the inflationary scale $H_{\inf }$ and also the reheating temperature $T_{\mathrm{R}}$. We show that the inflationary Hubble scale and reheating temperature are both bounded from below, $H_{\inf }\gtrsim 7\times 10^{11}$GeV, $T_{\mathrm{R}}\gtrsim 10^2$GeV. In particular, the high-scale inflation is consistent with 3keV hidden photon dark matter.

Comments: 12 pages, 2 figures; to appear in PLB