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Multipolar dark matter freeze-out in an early matter-dominated universe

Debajit Bose1,*, Prolay Chanda2,†, Suvam Maharana2,‡, and Poulami Mondal2,§

  • *Contact author: debajitbose550@gmail.com
  • †Contact author: prolay.chanda@tifr.res.in
  • ‡Contact author: suvam.maharana_528@tifr.res.in
  • §Contact author: poulami.mondal@tifr.res.in
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 083055 – Published 30 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/44kt-wqn4

Abstract

The relic abundance of thermal dark matter depends not only on its particle interactions but also on the expansion history of the early Universe. We study the freeze-out of fermionic dark matter interacting with the Standard Model through higher-dimensional electromagnetic operators in an early matter-dominated cosmology. In particular, we consider magnetic-dipole, electric-dipole, anapole, and charge-radius interactions and compute the interaction strengths required to reproduce the observed dark matter relic abundance, accounting for the subsequent entropy injection from the decay of a long-lived heavy field. We compare the resulting parameter space with that obtained in the standard radiation-dominated freeze-out scenario and confront it with current constraints from direct-detection experiments and solar-neutrino searches. We find that the entropy dilution associated with an early matter-dominated epoch significantly reduces the interaction strength required to obtain the observed relic abundance, thereby opening regions of parameter space that are excluded within the conventional cosmological history.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 083055– Published 30 October, 2026
  • Received 20 July 2026
  • Accepted 29 September 2026
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