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Invisible Higgs decay from dark matter freeze-in at stronger coupling

Lebedev, Oleg ; Morais, António P. LU ; Oliveira, Vinícius and Pasechnik, Roman LU (2025) In Journal of High Energy Physics 2025(4).
Abstract

We study the Higgs boson decay into dark matter (DM) in the framework of freeze-in at stronger coupling. Even though the Higgs-DM coupling is significant, up to order one, DM does not thermalize due to the Boltzmann suppression of its production at low temperatures. We find that this mechanism leads to observable Higgs decay into invisible final states with the branching fraction of 10% and below, while producing the correct DM relic abundance. This applies to the DM masses down to the MeV scale, which requires a careful treatment of the hadronic production modes. For DM masses below the muon threshold, the Boltzmann suppression is not operative and the freeze-in nature of the production mechanism is instead guaranteed by the smallness... (More)

We study the Higgs boson decay into dark matter (DM) in the framework of freeze-in at stronger coupling. Even though the Higgs-DM coupling is significant, up to order one, DM does not thermalize due to the Boltzmann suppression of its production at low temperatures. We find that this mechanism leads to observable Higgs decay into invisible final states with the branching fraction of 10% and below, while producing the correct DM relic abundance. This applies to the DM masses down to the MeV scale, which requires a careful treatment of the hadronic production modes. For DM masses below the muon threshold, the Boltzmann suppression is not operative and the freeze-in nature of the production mechanism is instead guaranteed by the smallness of the electron Yukawa coupling. As a result, MeV DM with a significant coupling to the Higgs boson remains non-thermal as long as the reheating temperature does not exceed O(100) MeV. Our findings indicate that there are good prospects for observing light non-thermal DM via invisible Higgs decay at the LHC and FCC.

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author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Dark Matter at Colliders, Early Universe Particle Physics, Models for Dark Matter, Particle Nature of Dark Matter
in
Journal of High Energy Physics
volume
2025
issue
4
article number
136
publisher
Springer
external identifiers
  • scopus:105005194769
ISSN
1029-8479
DOI
10.1007/JHEP04(2025)136
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
3be7dbd6-d6d7-4d87-9f31-c95ec14190fb
date added to LUP
2025-08-15 12:54:36
date last changed
2025-08-15 12:55:51
@article{3be7dbd6-d6d7-4d87-9f31-c95ec14190fb,
  abstract     = {{<p>We study the Higgs boson decay into dark matter (DM) in the framework of freeze-in at stronger coupling. Even though the Higgs-DM coupling is significant, up to order one, DM does not thermalize due to the Boltzmann suppression of its production at low temperatures. We find that this mechanism leads to observable Higgs decay into invisible final states with the branching fraction of 10% and below, while producing the correct DM relic abundance. This applies to the DM masses down to the MeV scale, which requires a careful treatment of the hadronic production modes. For DM masses below the muon threshold, the Boltzmann suppression is not operative and the freeze-in nature of the production mechanism is instead guaranteed by the smallness of the electron Yukawa coupling. As a result, MeV DM with a significant coupling to the Higgs boson remains non-thermal as long as the reheating temperature does not exceed O(100) MeV. Our findings indicate that there are good prospects for observing light non-thermal DM via invisible Higgs decay at the LHC and FCC.</p>}},
  author       = {{Lebedev, Oleg and Morais, António P. and Oliveira, Vinícius and Pasechnik, Roman}},
  issn         = {{1029-8479}},
  keywords     = {{Dark Matter at Colliders; Early Universe Particle Physics; Models for Dark Matter; Particle Nature of Dark Matter}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{4}},
  publisher    = {{Springer}},
  series       = {{Journal of High Energy Physics}},
  title        = {{Invisible Higgs decay from dark matter freeze-in at stronger coupling}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2025)136}},
  doi          = {{10.1007/JHEP04(2025)136}},
  volume       = {{2025}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}