Related papers: Thermal Relics in Hidden Sectors
If the interaction rates between the visible and the dark sectors were never strong enough, the observed dark matter relic abundance could have been produced in the early Universe by non-thermal processes. This is what occurs in the…
We study general freeze-out scenarios where an arbitrary number of initial and final dark matter particles participate in the number-changing freeze-out interaction. We consider a simple sector with two particle species undergoing such a…
WIMPless dark matter provides a framework in which dark matter particles with a wide range of masses naturally have the correct thermal relic density. We show that WIMPless dark matter with mass around 2-10 GeV can explain the annual…
In this work we combine information from relic abundance, direct detection, cosmic microwave background, positron fraction, gamma rays, and colliders to explore the existing constraints on couplings between Dark Matter and Standard Model…
We discuss a supersymmetric model for cogenesis of dark and baryonic matter where the dark matter (DM) has mass in the 8-10 GeV range as indicated by several direct detection searches including most recently the CDMS experiment with the…
There are several ways to explain the dark matter relic density other than by the ordinary freeze-out scenario. For example, the freeze-in mechanism may constitute an alternative for generating the correct relic density for dark matter…
Any form of dark matter which was in thermal equilibrium with the Standard Model in the early Universe must have some annihilation mechanism in order to avoid overclosure. In general, such models are now constrained by the negative…
We re-examine unitarity bounds on the annihilation cross section of thermal-WIMP dark matter. For high-mass pointlike dark matter, it is generic to form WIMP bound states, which, together with Sommerfeld enhancement, affects the relic…
Thermal relics lighter than an MeV contribute to the energy density of the universe at the time of nucleosynthesis and recombination. Constraints on extra radiation degrees of freedom typically exclude even the simplest of such dark…
We revisit the singlet scalar dark matter model in the presence of a non-standard cosmological history prior to radiation domination. We focus on the regime in which the relic abundance is set by 4-to-2 self-annihilations while the dark and…
The WIMP "miracle" suggests a new physics threshold ranging from the weak scale up to several tens of TeVs. Obtaining the correct dark matter density in many theories aiming to solve the hierarchy problem may thus require some amount of…
We investigate the relic density n_\chi of non-relativistic long-lived or stable particles \chi in non-standard cosmological scenarios. We calculate the relic abundance starting from arbitrary initial temperatures of the radiation-dominated…
We show that dark matter could be made of massive gauge bosons whose stability doesn't require to impose by hand any discrete or global symmetry. Stability of gauge bosons can be guaranteed by the custodial symmetry associated to the gauge…
As experimental null results increase the pressure on heavy weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) as an explanation of thermal dark matter (DM), it seems timely to explore previously overlooked regions of the WIMP parameter space. In…
The combination of S-matrix unitarity and the dynamics of thermal freeze-out for massive relic particles (denoted here simply by WIMPs) implies a lower limit on the density of such particles, that provide a (potentially sub-dominant)…
We consider dark matter as Strongly Interacting Massive Particles (SIMPs) in a hidden sector, thermally decoupled from the Standard Model heat bath. Due to its strong interactions, the number-changing processes of the SIMP lead to its…
The discovery of dark matter (DM) at XENONnT or LZ would place constraints on DM particle mass and coupling constants. It is interesting to ask when these constraints can be compatible with the DM thermal production mechanism. We address…
Non-thermal histories for the early universe have received notable attention as they are a rich source of phenomenology, while also being well motivated by top-down approaches to beyond the Standard Model physics. The early (pre-BBN) matter…
We investigate benchmark scenarios for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) that naturally evade current direct detection constraints by featuring suppressed spin-independent cross-sections. Focusing on three representative models,…
The freeze-in mechanism of dark matter production provides a simple and intriguing alternative to the WIMP paradigm. In this paper, we analyze whether freeze-in can be used to account for the dark matter in the so-called singlet fermionic…