Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: A bstract We study the Higgs boson decay into dark matter (DM) in the framework of freeze-in at stronger coupling. Even though the Higgs-DM coupling is significant, up to order one, DM does not thermalize due to the Boltzmann suppression of its production at low temperatures. We find that this mechanism leads to observable Higgs decay into invisible final states with the branching fraction of 10% and below, while producing the correct DM relic abundance. This applies to the DM masses down to the MeV scale, which requires a careful treatment of the hadronic production modes. For DM masses below the muon threshold, the Boltzmann suppression is not operative and the freeze-in nature of the production mechanism is instead guaranteed by the smallness of the electron Yukawa coupling. As a result, MeV DM with a significant coupling to the Higgs boson remains non-thermal as long as the reheating temperature does not exceed $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (100) MeV. Our findings indicate that there are good prospects for observing light non-thermal DM via invisible Higgs decay at the LHC and FCC.
Source: Journal of High Energy Physics
Authors: Oleg Lebedev, António P. Morais, Vinícius Oliveira, Roman Pasechnik
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Awards: G1024812812, G1397148809, G1483381719, G1690109813, G182503756, G1909699152, G2311541684, Fenomenologia de Modelos de Multi-Higgs no LHC e Além, G253812421, Centro de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Matemática e Aplicações, Fenomenologia de Neutrinos: das Oscilações às Ondas Gravitacionais, G3069120617, G306962499, G3396171492, G3461949579, Ecos de Unificação Completa em experiências de colisão e de ondas gravitacionais com aprendizagem profunda., G3818084518, G388309941, G4100379140, G4231479479, G434337789, G4398254533, G440070244, G4517594230, G5454278309, Problems in Quantum Chromo Dynamical Field Theory and Beyond, G6997658380, G7184583013, Centro de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Matemática e Aplicações, G8191554803, Light and Ultralight Dark Matter: exploring novel synergies between particle physics, strong gravity and cosmology, G8473735026
OpenAlex ID: W4409608272