Possible s-wave annihilation for MeV dark matter with the 21-cm absorption

Abstract

The CMB observation sets stringent constraints on MeV dark matter (DM) annihilating into charged states/photons in s-wave, and the recent observation of the 21-cm absorption at the cosmic dawn reported by EDGES is also very strict for s-wave annihilations of MeV DM. The millicharged DM with p-wave dominant annihilations during the freeze-out period are considered in literatures to give an explanation about the 21-cm absorption, with photon mediated scattering cooling the hydrogen. In this paper, we focus on the annihilation of millicharged DM being s-wave dominant. To explain the 21-cm absorption and meanwhile be compatible with the CMB and 21-cm absorption bounds on DM annihilations, we consider the annihilation close to the resonance, with the new mediator (here is dark photon) mass being slightly above twice of the millicharged DM mass. In this case, the annihilation cross section at the temperature $T \to 0$ could be much smaller than that at $T_f$, which would be tolerated by the bounds on DM annihilations, avoiding the excess heating from DM s-wave annihilations to the hydrogen gas. The beam dump and lepton collider experiments can be employed to hunt for millicharged DM via the production of the invisible dark photon.