English

Interplay between Electroweak Symmetry Breaking and Higgs Portal Dark Matter

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-03-03 v4

Abstract

Models of Dark Matter must contend with the fact that the presence of electroweak symmetry breaking along the thermal evolution of the Universe modifies the masses, interactions and, thus, the thermally averaged cross sections. We study in detail the impact of taking (not taking) the presence of the electroweak symmetry breaking into account in the calculations of the Dark Matter relic density in Higgs portal models, providing a model-independent measure of such differences. By focusing on a particular model, we show that ignoring this effect can lead to the inclusion (exclusion) of wrong (viable) regions of parameter space.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.07946,
  title  = {Interplay between Electroweak Symmetry Breaking and Higgs Portal Dark Matter},
  author = {Sreemanti Chakraborti and André Milagre and Rui Santos and João P. Silva},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.07946},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

18 pages, 7 figures; v3: changed notation x-> y=1/T, added Eq.(5); v4: added Table 2 and references