English

Illuminating sequential freeze-in dark matter with dark photon signal at the CERN SHiP experiment

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-04-07 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

Single-field freeze-in dark matter barely leaves observable footprints in dark matter direct detection, collider or fixed-target experiments, which can be altered in the two-field context. In this work, we consider sequential freeze-in dark matter through signals of dark photon mediator with a mass range of mA10210m_{A'}\sim 10^{-2}-10 GeV covered by the proposed SHiP experiment. We show that the dark charge is fixed to be e1.3×1012e'\sim 1.3\times 10^{-12} and the mixing parameter is restricted to 1011ϵ<108107.510^{-11}\leq \epsilon< 10^{-8}-10^{-7.5}, as a result of the out-of-equilibrium condition of dark photon and the observed relic abundance of dark matter. Within this ϵ\epsilon region, the 5(15)-year data of proton bremsstrahlung process for the dark photon, assuming vector meson (dipole) dominance, excludes ϵ108.5(107.9)\epsilon\geq 10^{-8.5} (10^{-7.9}) at 90\% confidence level, implying only a narrow region of ϵ\epsilon close to 1011\sim 10^{-11} left for alternative tests.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.05380,
  title  = {Illuminating sequential freeze-in dark matter with dark photon signal at the CERN SHiP experiment},
  author = {Xinyue Yin and Sibo Zheng},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.05380},
  year   = {2026}
}