Light dark matter and dark radiation

Light ( M ≤ 20 MeV) dark-matter particles freeze out after neutrino decoupling. If the dark-matter particle couples to a neutrino or an electromagnetic plasma, the late time entropy production from dark-matter annihilation can change the neutrino-to-photon temperature ratio, and equally the effective number of neutrinos N eff . We study the non-equilibrium effects of dark-matter annihilation on the N eff and the effects by using a thermal equilibrium approximation. Both results are constrained with Planck observations. We demonstrate that the lower bounds of the dark-matter mass and the possibilities of the existence of additional radiation particles are more strongly constrained for dark-matter annihilation process in non-equilibrium.