  Building on recently constructed inflationary vector dark matter production
mechanisms as well as studies of magnetogenesis, we show that a dark Schwinger
mechanism can generate the observed dark matter relic abundance. This mechanism
can take place during inflation and/or after reheating and leads to a feebly
interacting dark sector which is comprised of dark fermions and/or scalars
which can be as light as ~ 10 MeV and as heavy as ~ 10^10 GeV depending on how
the (unknown) Schwinger current redshifts after inflation. The background dark
electric field is generated during inflation and can continue sourcing
Schwinger pair production after reheating until the dark charged particles
become non-relativistic. The dark matter can interact very weakly via the
exchange of ultralight dark photons and has a power spectrum which is peaked at
very small scales, thus evading potential isocurvature constraints. We
emphasize that this mechanism is viable even near the conformal limit where
(purely) gravitational particle production is negligible. Thus dark matter can
be produced solely via the Schwinger effect even with a very weak electric
force.
