Related papers: PeV-Scale Dark Matter as a Thermal Relic of a Deco…
If, during the early Universe epoch, the dark matter particle thermalizes in a hidden sector which does not thermalize with the Standard Model thermal bath, its relativistic thermal decoupling can easily lead to the observed relic density,…
It has recently been shown that if the dark matter is in thermal equilibrium with a sector that is highly decoupled from the Standard Model, it can freeze-out with an acceptable relic abundance, even if the dark matter is as heavy as ~1-100…
We show that a thermal relic which decouples from the standard model (SM) plasma while relativistic can be a viable dark matter (DM) candidate, if the decoupling is followed by a period of entropy dilution that heats up the SM, but not the…
We show that hidden hot dark matter, hidden-sector dark matter with interactions that decouple when it is relativistic, is a viable dark matter candidate provided it has never been in thermal equilibrium with the particles of the standard…
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 discuss a simple model of thermal relic dark matter whose mass can be much larger than the so-called unitarity limit on the mass of point-like particle dark matter. The model consists of new strong dynamics with one flavor of fermions in…
We propose a mechanism of elementary thermal dark matter with mass up to $10^{14}$ GeV, within a standard cosmological history, whose relic abundance is determined solely by its interactions with the Standard Model, without violating the…
A thermally decoupled hidden sector of particles, with a mass gap, generically enters a phase of cannibalism in the early Universe. The Standard Model sector becomes exponentially colder than the hidden sector. We propose the Cannibal Dark…
We consider a class of models in which thermal dark matter is lighter than an MeV. If dark matter thermalizes with the Standard Model below the temperature of neutrino-photon decoupling, equilibration and freeze-out cools and heats the…
The thermal freeze-out mechanism for relic dark matter heavier than $O(10-100 $ TeV$)$ requires cross-sections that violate perturbative unitarity. Yet the existence of dark matter heavier than these scales is certainly plausible from a…
Dark Matter (DM) may be a thermal relic that annihilates into heavier states in the early Universe. This Forbidden DM framework accommodates a wide range of DM masses from keV to weak scales. An exponential hierarchy between the DM mass and…
We propose a new paradigm for the thermal production of dark matter in the early universe, in which dark-matter particles acquire their mass and freeze out spontaneously from the thermal bath after a dark phase transition takes place. The…
Dark matter may be a thermal relic whose abundance is set by mutual annihilations among multiple species. Traditionally, this coannihilation scenario has been applied to weak scale dark matter that is highly degenerate with other states. We…
The identity of dark matter is being sought with increasingly sensitive and voluminous underground detectors. Recently the XENON1T collaboration reported excess electronic recoil events, with most of these having recoil energies around…
We discuss the phenomenology of an MeV-scale Dirac fermion coupled to the Standard Model through a dark photon with kinetic mixing with the electromagnetic field. We compute the dark matter relic density and explore the interplay of direct…
Dark matter may be hidden, with no standard model gauge interactions. At the same time, in WIMPless models with hidden matter masses proportional to hidden gauge couplings squared, the hidden dark matter's thermal relic density may…
Dark Matter could be a composite state of a confining sector with an approximate scale symmetry. We consider the case where the associated pseudo-Goldstone boson, the dilaton, mediates its interactions with the Standard Model. When the…
We study the possibility that light dark matter can be produced with right relic density by the decay of other dark sector particles. We study this possibility in a model with right-handed neutrinos, a dark sector singlet scalar and a dark…
We present a minimal extension of the standard model that includes a long-lived fermion with weak-scale mass and an ${\cal O}({\rm GeV})$ fermionic dark matter candidate both of which are coupled to quarks. Decays of a TeV-scale colored…
Dark matter (DM) as a thermal relic of the primordial plasma is increasingly pressured by direct and indirect searches, while the same production mechanism in a decoupled sector is much less constrained. We extend the standard treatment of…