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Hauptverfasser: D'Eramo, Francesco, Hajkarim, Fazlollah, Lenoci, Alessandro
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.04974
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author D'Eramo, Francesco
Hajkarim, Fazlollah
Lenoci, Alessandro
author_facet D'Eramo, Francesco
Hajkarim, Fazlollah
Lenoci, Alessandro
contents Motivated by the stunning projections for future CMB surveys, we evaluate the amount of dark radiation produced in the early Universe by two-body decays or binary scatterings with thermal bath particles via a rigorous analysis in momentum space. We track the evolution of the dark radiation phase space distribution, and we use the asymptotic solution to evaluate the amount of additional relativistic energy density parameterized in terms of an effective number of additional neutrino species $ΔN_{\rm eff}$. Our approach allows for studying light particles that never reach equilibrium across cosmic history, and to scrutinize the physics of the decoupling when they thermalize instead. We incorporate quantum statistical effects for all the particles involved in the production processes, and we account for the energy exchanged between the visible and invisible sectors. Non-instantaneous decoupling is responsible for spectral distortions in the final distributions, and we quantify how they translate into the corresponding value for $ΔN_{\rm eff}$. Finally, we undertake a comprehensive comparison between our exact results and approximated methods commonly employed in the existing literature. Remarkably, we find that the difference can be larger than the experimental sensitivity of future observations, justifying the need for a rigorous analysis in momentum space.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_04974
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dark Radiation from the Primordial Thermal Bath in Momentum Space
D'Eramo, Francesco
Hajkarim, Fazlollah
Lenoci, Alessandro
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Motivated by the stunning projections for future CMB surveys, we evaluate the amount of dark radiation produced in the early Universe by two-body decays or binary scatterings with thermal bath particles via a rigorous analysis in momentum space. We track the evolution of the dark radiation phase space distribution, and we use the asymptotic solution to evaluate the amount of additional relativistic energy density parameterized in terms of an effective number of additional neutrino species $ΔN_{\rm eff}$. Our approach allows for studying light particles that never reach equilibrium across cosmic history, and to scrutinize the physics of the decoupling when they thermalize instead. We incorporate quantum statistical effects for all the particles involved in the production processes, and we account for the energy exchanged between the visible and invisible sectors. Non-instantaneous decoupling is responsible for spectral distortions in the final distributions, and we quantify how they translate into the corresponding value for $ΔN_{\rm eff}$. Finally, we undertake a comprehensive comparison between our exact results and approximated methods commonly employed in the existing literature. Remarkably, we find that the difference can be larger than the experimental sensitivity of future observations, justifying the need for a rigorous analysis in momentum space.
title Dark Radiation from the Primordial Thermal Bath in Momentum Space
topic High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.04974