Kavli Affiliate: Edward W. Kolb
| First 5 Authors: Christian Capanelli, Leah Jenks, Edward W. Kolb, Evan McDonough,
| Summary:
The Kalb-Ramond field is an antisymmetric, rank-two tensor field which most
notably appears in the context of string theory, but has largely been
unexplored in the context of cosmology. In this work, motivated by the
Kalb-Ramond field in string theory, and antisymmetric tensor fields that emerge
in effective field theories ranging from particle physics to condensed matter,
we study the primordial production of interacting massive
Kalb-Ramond-like-particles (KRLPs). KRLPs contain features of both dark photon
and axion models, which can be appreciated via their duality properties. While
the massless non-interacting KRLP is dual to a pseudoscalar, and the massive
non-interacting KRLP is dual to a pseudovector, the interacting massive KRLP
can be distinguished from its scalar and vector counterparts. We study
early-universe production of KRLPs via the freeze-in mechanism, considering a
`dark photon-like’ interaction, an `axion-like’ interaction, and a `Higgs
portal’ interaction, as well as production via cosmological gravitational
particle production. We find that as a dark matter candidate, KRLPs can be
produced by all of the above mechanisms and account for the relic density of
dark matter today for a wide range of masses. Finally, we comment on the
potential to obtain both warm and cold dark matter subcomponents, and speculate
on observational and experimental prospects.
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