Early Matter Domination from Long-Lived Particles in the Visible Sector

Abstract

We show that a nonstandard cosmological history with a period of early matter domination driven by a sub-TeV visible-sector particle can arise rather naturally. This scenario involves a long-lived standard model singlet that acquires a thermal abundance at high temperatures from decays and inverse decays of a parent particle with SM charge(s), and subsequently dominates the energy density of the Universe as a frozen species. Entropy generation at the end of early matter domination dilutes the abundance of dangerous relics (such as gravitinos) by a factor as large as $10^4$. The scenario can accommodate the correct dark matter relic abundance for cases with $⟨{\sigma }_{\mathrm{ann}}v{⟩}_{\mathrm{f}}\lessgtr 3\times 10^{-26}$cm${}^3$s${}^{-1}$. More importantly, the allowed parameter space can be directly probed by proposed searches for neutral long-lived particles at the energy frontier, allowing us to use particle physics experiments to reconstruct the cosmological history just prior to big bang nucleosynthesis.

Comments: 15 pages, 8 figures; reference added