We present a new scenario of freeze-in, where the dark matter is produced exclusively via the annihilation of photons. We study fermionic and scalar dark matter models with a focus on cosmological histories with low reheat temperatures. Photonic freeze-in can be probed via direct detection, dark matter production in SN1987A, and via the production of new electromagnetically charged states at the Large Hadron Collider. We briefly discuss UV-complete models that can realise this scenario.
@article{arxiv.2412.17308,
title = {Photonic Freeze-In},
author = {Peter Cox and Matthew J. Dolan and Frederick J. Hiskens},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.17308},
year = {2024}
}