{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/a-dark-sink-enhances-the-direct-detection-of","title":"A Dark Sink Enhances the Direct Detection of Freeze-in Dark Matter","arxiv_id":"2312.14152","date":"2023-12-21","proceeding":null,"authors":["Prudhvi N. Bhattiprolu","Robert McGehee","Aaron Pierce"],"abstract":"We describe a simple dark sector structure which, if present, has implications for the direct detection of dark matter (DM): the Dark Sink. A Dark Sink transports energy density from the DM into light dark-sector states that do not appreciably contribute to the DM density. As an example, we consider a light, neutral fermion $\\psi$ which interacts solely with DM $\\chi$ via the exchange of a heavy scalar $\\Phi$. We illustrate the impact of a Dark Sink by adding one to a DM freeze-in model in which $\\chi$ couples to a light dark photon $\\gamma '$ which kinetically mixes with the Standard Model (SM) photon. This freeze-in model (absent the sink) is itself a benchmark for ongoing experiments. In some cases, the literature for this benchmark has contained errors; we correct the predictions and provide them as a public code. We then analyze how the Dark Sink modifies this benchmark, solving coupled Boltzmann equations for the dark-sector energy density and DM yield. We check the contribution of the Dark Sink $\\psi$'s to dark radiation; consistency with existing data limits the maximum attainable cross section. For DM with a mass between $\\text{MeV} -\\mathcal{O}(10\\text{ GeV})$, adding the Dark Sink can increase predictions for the direct detection cross section all the way up to the current limits.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.14152v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.14152v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"a-dark-sink-enhances-the-direct-detection-of","repo_url":"https://github.com/prudhvibhattiprolu/freezein","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}