Imprints of MeV scale hidden dark sector at Planck data

New light species can contribute to the number of effective relativistic degrees of freedom (Neff) at Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) which is precisely measured by Planck. In this work, we consider an MeV scale thermally decoupled non-minimal dark sector and study the imprint of the dark sector d...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sougata Ganguly, Sourov Roy, Abhijit Kumar Saha
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2022-11-01
Series:Physics Letters B
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269322005974
Description
Summary:New light species can contribute to the number of effective relativistic degrees of freedom (Neff) at Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) which is precisely measured by Planck. In this work, we consider an MeV scale thermally decoupled non-minimal dark sector and study the imprint of the dark sector dynamics on the measurement of Neff at the time of CMB formation. We have predicted the allowed region of model parameter space in the light of constraints arising from the measurements of both Neff and dark matter relic density by Planck. It turns out that the impact of the dark sector dynamics on Neff is significant in case of a non-hierarchical mass spectrum of the dark sector particles.
ISSN:0370-2693