Freeze-in dark matter via lepton portal: Hubble tension and stellar cooling

Abstract

We propose a new freeze-in dark matter candidate which feebly couples to the standard model charged leptons. The feeble interactions allow it (i) to freeze-in from the Standard Model thermal bath with its relic density being either a fraction or the entirety of the observed dark matter density and (ii) to radiatively decay to two photons in the dark matter mass ranges of order keV scale with lifetime larger than the age of Universe. These features make this model a realistic realization of dark matter with late-time decay to reduce Hubble tension. We show the best-fit value of H0 = 68.31(69.34) km s−1Mpc−1 in light of Planck 2018+BAO(+LSS)+Pantheon data sets. We then use stellar cooling data to place constraints on the parameter space favored by the Hubble tension. While the universal coupling scenario is excluded, the hierarchical coupling scenario can be tested by future observations of white dwarfs after a careful look into photon inverse decay, Primakoff and Bremsstrahlung emission of the dark matter in various stellar systems. The viable parameter space may be linked to anomalies in future X-ray telescopes.