| Speaker: | Julia Harz (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) |
|---|---|
| Title: | Dark Matter Production at Finite Temperature |
| Date (JST): | Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 13:30 - 15:00 |
| Place: | Seminar Room A |
| Abstract: |
Finite-temperature effects can play a relevant role in the production of dark matter, depending on the underlying mechanism. I will begin with a brief overview of the well-established freeze-out scenario and explain why thermal corrections are typically subleading in this framework. The main focus of this talk will be on finite-temperature effects in the freeze-in mechanism. After motivating freeze-in and emphasizing its connection to collider searches and cosmology, I will review the current state of the art and discuss conceptual limitations of existing approaches. I will then present a first-principles calculation of scalar dark matter production in the freeze-in regime and compare our results with previous ones. I will conclude by showing that our framework further resolves unphysical, negative production rates at low momenta, as previously reported for axion-like particle production from Abelian gauge bosons, where the low-momentum spectrum plays a crucial role in structure-formation constraints. |
