At the EDGES of MADness: phenomenology of relic millicharged atomic dark matter

Abstract

Millicharged dark matter lives in a corner of parameter space that has been considerably shrinking over the past decades, due to constraints from cosmology, astrophysical systems, and ground-based experiments. A particularly interesting probe is the 21-cm absorption signal at Cosmic Dawn, which attracted interest in light of the EDGES claim: the reported excess absorption can be explained by millicharged dark matter with a fractional electric charge of~$10^{-6} \lesssim ε\lesssim 10^{-4}$, but it must be a subpercent of the total dark matter abundance to remain consistent with the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We show that very low fractions of millicharged dark matter naturally arise from atomic dark matter: a dark sector model that replicates the physics of standard atomic hydrogen. Dark ions undergo the process of dark recombination, leaving a relic ionized component that, in the presence of kinetic mixing, is naturally millicharged. We modify the cosmological Boltzmann solver CLASS to incorporate this scenario, and we investigate the parameter space of millicharged atomic dark matter (MAD) that is allowed by CMB, large-scale structure, and supernovae data. We find there are cosmologically viable regions of MAD parameter space that are consistent with laboratory and astrophysical bounds and also overlap with the EDGES-defined window. Although the EDGES result is likely not a Cosmic Dawn signal, MAD leaves distinctive cosmological signatures, accessible to upcoming 21-cm observations.