WIMP Meets ALP: Coherent Freeze-Out of Dark Matter

Abstract

We consider the cosmological history of a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) coupled to a light axion-like particle (ALP) via a quadratic coupling. Although the coupling is too feeble to thermalize the ALP, coherent forward scattering between the two sectors induces temperature-dependent mass shifts that substantially modify both WIMP freeze-out and ALP misalignment dynamics, giving rise to a novel coherent freeze-out mechanism. At high temperatures, the WIMP thermal bath spontaneously breaks the symmetry of the ALP potential, displacing the field to a new vacuum. The resulting back-reaction reduces the WIMP effective mass and significantly delays its freeze-out. Depending on the strength of the coupling, symmetry restoration occurs via either a first-order phase transition (FOPT) or a crossover. In the FOPT regime, dark matter consists solely of WIMPs, whose delayed freeze-out permits annihilation cross sections up to three orders of magnitude above the standard value, while still yielding the correct relic density. In the crossover regime, both WIMP and ALP can contribute to dark matter. Remarkably, we find an "ALP miracle": a Planck-suppressed quadratic coupling yields an ALP abundance comparable to the observed dark matter density, largely independent of its initial displacement and mass.

Comments: 7+12 pages, 4+6 figures; v2: bounds updated in Fig. 3, numerical calculations updated using full one-loop thermal potential, accepted for publication in PRL