An early $Z'$ dominance: dark matter, gravitational waves&collider probes

Abstract

In the minimal anomaly-free gauged B$-$L extension of the Standard Model (SM), we consider a scenario in which the energy density of the new Abelian gauge boson dominates the Universe prior to big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), resulting in an early matter-dominated (EMD) era. Taking one of the three right-handed neutrinos to be a decaying dark matter (DM) candidate, we investigate its production during this EMD phase. We show that the region of parameter space consistent with the relic abundance lies within the projected sensitivity of several gravitational wave (GW) experiments, where the GW signal arises from cosmic strings formed during the spontaneous breaking of the gauged B$-$L symmetry. We further constrain the viable parameter space using bounds from collider experiments, beam dump experiments, BBN, and ultra high energy neutrino observations, demonstrating the complementarity of multi-messenger probes in exploring physics beyond the SM as well as non-standard cosmological histories prior to BBN.