WISPy cold dark matter

Abstract

Very weakly interacting slim particles (WISPs), such as axion-like particles (ALPs) or hidden photons (HPs), may be non-thermally produced via the misalignment mechanism in the early universe and survive as a cold dark matter population until today. We find that, both for ALPs and HPs whose dominant interactions with the standard model arise from couplings to photons, a huge region in the parameter spaces spanned by photon coupling and ALP or HP mass can give rise to the observed cold dark matter. Remarkably, a large region of this parameter space coincides with that predicted in well motivated models of fundamental physics. A wide range of experimental searches — exploiting haloscopes (direct dark matter searches exploiting microwave cavities), helioscopes (searches for solar ALPs or HPs), or light-shining-through-a-wall techniques — can probe large parts of this parameter space in the foreseeable future.