A 331 WIMPy dark radiation model

Recent observations suggest that the number of relativistic degrees of freedom in the early universe might exceed what is predicted in the standard cosmological model. If even a small, percent-level fraction of dark matter particles are produced relativistically, they could mimic the effect of an extra realistic species at matter–radiation equality while obeying BBN, CMB and Structure Formation bounds. We show that this scenario is quite naturally realized with a weak-scale dark matter particle and a high-scale “mother” particle within a well-motivated 3-3-1 gauge model, which is particularly interesting for being consistent with electroweak precision measurements, with recent LHC results, and for offering a convincing explanation for the number of generations in the Standard Model.