Related papers: Jump Starting the Dark Sector with a Phase Transit…

We carry out a detailed study of the confinement phase transition in a dark sector with a $SU(N)$ gauge group and a single generation of dark heavy quark. We focus on heavy enough quarks such that their abundance freezes out before the…

We revisit the proposal that an energy transfer from dark energy into dark matter can be described in field theory by a first order phase transition. We analyze the model proposed in Ref. Abdalla et al. (2013), using updated constraints on…

We study the effect of a first-order phase transition in a confining $SU(N)$ dark sector with heavy dark quarks. The baryons of this sector are the dark matter candidate. During the confinement phase transition the heavy quarks are trapped…

All of the significant evidence for dark matter observed thus far has been through its gravitational interactions. After 40 years of direct detection experiments, the parameter space for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) as dark…

We study constraints from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis on inert particles in a dark sector which contribute to the Hubble rate and therefore change the predictions of the primordial nuclear abundances. We pay special attention to the case of…

Dark Yang-Mills sectors, which are ubiquitous in the string landscape, may be reheated above their critical temperature and subsequently go through a confining first-order phase transition that produces stochastic gravitational waves in the…

First-order cosmological phase transitions (PT) can take place in a dark sector at relatively late times between the big-bang nucleosynthesis and recombination epochs. Because bubble nucleation is stochastic, the PT completes at different…

Both scalar and vector dark matter can be produced during a cosmological first order phase transition if the dark matter is coupled to the field undergoing the transition. Both kinds of particle are also produced by the plasma through the…

Many new physics models include secluded sectors that interact little with the Standard Model and whose internal interactions control the dark matter abundance. If these same interactions are responsible for maintaining kinematic…

It has recently been shown that if the dark matter is in thermal equilibrium with a sector that is highly decoupled from the Standard Model, it can freeze-out with an acceptable relic abundance, even if the dark matter is as heavy as ~1-100…

Taking axion inflation as an example, we estimate the maximal temperature ($T_{\rm max}^{ }$) that can be reached in the post-inflationary universe, as a function of the confinement scale of a non-Abelian dark sector ($\Lambda_{\rm IR}^{…

We study whether a first-order phase transition at the end of inflation can generate the observed dark matter abundance through bubble collisions. The transition occurs in a spectator scalar sector with an inflaton-dependent effective…

We describe a new mechanism of dark matter production in the early Universe, based on the dynamics of a first order phase transition. We assume that dark matter particles acquire mass during the phase transition, making it energetically…

We consider the generic scenario of dark energy which arises through the latent heat of a hidden sector first order cosmological phase transition. This field could account for the extra radiation degree of freedom suggested by the CMB. We…

In this work, we present UV completions of the recently proposed number-changing Co-SIMP freeze-out mechanism. In contrast to the standard cannibalistic-type dark matter picture that occurs entirely in the dark sector, the $3\to 2$ process…

We consider the possible existence of a SM-neutral and light dark sector coupled to the visible sector through irrelevant portal interactions. Scenarios of this kind are motivated by dark matter and arise in various extensions of the…

We explore the transition from the $\Lambda$CDM to an interacting dark sector by introducing a model with a redshift threshold that controls the onset of the energy transfer between the dark energy and the dark matter. Below the transition…

We propose a simple yet testable framework for light fermion dark matter (DM) with mass in the MeV--GeV range, charged under a dark $U(1)_D$ gauge symmetry. The $U(1)_D$ is spontaneously broken by a scalar field $\Phi$, giving mass to the…

We analyse three cosmological scenarios with interaction in the dark sector, which are particular cases of a general expression for the energy flux from vacuum to matter. In the first case the interaction leads to a transition from an…

The recent analysis from the SH0ES Collaboration has confirmed the existence of a Hubble tension between measurements at high redshift ($z> 1000$) and at low redshift ($z<1$) at the $5\sigma$ level with the low redshift measurement giving a…