{"paper":{"title":"Dark Photons in the Early Universe: From Thermal Production to Cosmological Constraints","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["astro-ph.CO","hep-ex"],"primary_cat":"hep-ph","authors_text":"Boting Zhou, Xun-Jie Xu","submitted_at":"2025-12-09T12:17:03Z","abstract_excerpt":"Dark photons, a generic class of light gauge bosons that interact with the Standard Model (SM) exclusively through kinetic mixing, arise naturally in many gauge extensions of the SM. Motivated by these theoretical considerations, we present a comprehensive analysis of their thermal production in the early universe. Our calculation covers a broad range of dark photon masses from 0.1 keV to 100 MeV and include inverse decay, annihilation, and semi-Compton processes. Wherever possible, we present analytical estimates of the production rates and yields, and verify their accuracy numerically. For d"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2512.08528","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2512.08528/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}