arXiv2026
We study dark photon dark matter X associated with a dark $U(1)_X$ gauge symmetry. To evade laboratory and cosmological constraints on kinetic mixing with the Standard Model $U(1)_Y$, we assign a $Z_2$-odd dark parity to X that forbids such mixing. The leading interactions then arise from gauge-invariant dimension-6 Higgs-portal operators, including both parity-even and parity-odd terms. We assume that the dark matter mass is generated via the Stueckelberg mechanism. In the interacting Stueckelberg EFT, a gauge-invariant dimension-6 parent reduces in unitary gauge to the nominal dimension-4 Higgs-portal interaction $(H^†H)X_μX^μ$, with its coefficient correlated with $m_X^2/Λ^2$, while additional derivative operators are organized by the same longitudinal-mode power counting. We investigate freeze-in production of X from Higgs-pair annihilations after reheating, incorporating both field-strength and Stueckelberg-allowed operators. First, we consider the case in which the Wilson coefficients of the gauge-invariant dimension-6 operators, C and $\tilde C$, are of order unity. Under a conservative single-cutoff power counting in which the strong-coupling scales of the longitudinal mode lie above the cutoff of the field-strength effective theory, we find that the Stueckelberg contributions remain subdominant in dark matter production. We emphasize that this ordering of scales is an explicit assumption rather than a universal consequence of perturbative unitarity. Next, we explore a more general situation in which C and $\tilde C$ are smaller than unity. In this second case, Stueckelberg-allowed operators can become comparable and generate contributions proportional to $T_{reh}^3$, $T_{reh}^5$, and $T_{reh}^7$, including sign-dependent interference effects. For both cases, we show that there exists a wide parameter space consistent with the observed dark matter relic density.