Related papers: Phases of Cannibal Dark Matter
In the late Universe, and on cosmological scales, dark matter is conventionally assumed to be collisionless, as a consequence of the strong existing bounds on dark matter interactions at the Cosmic Microwave Background last-scattering…
When thermal rate equations are derived for the evolution of slow variables, it is often practical to parametrize the right-hand side with chemical potentials. To close the system, the chemical potentials are subsequently re-expressed in…
WIMP-type dark matter may have additional interactions that break baryon number, leading to induced nucleon decays which are subject to direct experimental constraints from proton decay experiments. In this work, we analyze the possibility…
We investigate the non-zero temperature dynamics of a sub-GeV dark matter scenario freezing-out via self-interactions. As a prototype, we take up the case of a scalar dark matter species undergoing $3 \to 2$ number changing annihilations…
The inability of standard non-interacting cold dark matter (CDM) to account for the small scale structure of individual galaxies has led to the suggestion that the dark matter may undergo elastic and/or inelastic scattering. We simulate the…
Indirect detection of dark matter particles, i.e. the detection of annihilation or decay products of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, has entered a pivotal phase as experiments reach sensitivities that probe the most interesting…
The cold dark matter may be in a meta-stable state and decays to other particles with a very long lifetime. If the decaying products of the dark matter are weakly interacting, e.g. neutrinos, then it would have little impact on…
In this paper we investigate light dark matter scenarios where annihilation to Standard Model particles at tree-level is kinematically forbidden. In such cases annihilation can be aided by massive Standard Model-like species, called {\it…
We consider dark matter (DM) with very weak couplings to the standard model (SM), such that its self-annihilation cross section is much smaller than the canonical one, $\langle\sigma v\rangle_{\chi\chi} \ll…
The properties of the dark matter that determine its thermal relic abundance can be very different from the dark matter properties today. We investigate this possibility by coupling a dark matter sector to a scalar that undergoes a phase…
Calculating the abundance of thermally produced dark matter particles has become a standard procedure, with sophisticated methods guaranteeing a precision that matches the percent-level accuracy in the observational determination of the…
Dark matter drops out of kinetic equilibrium with standard model particles when the momentum-transfer rate equals the expansion rate. In a radiation-dominated universe, this occurs at essentially the same time as dark matter kinetically…
Assisted annihilation generates thermal sub-GeV dark matter through a novel annihilation between a pair of dark matter and standard-model-like states, called the "assister". We show that, depending on the mass hierarchy between the assister…
We study the mutual interaction between the dark sectors (dark matter and dark energy) of the Universe by resorting to the extended thermodynamics of irreversible processes and constrain the former with supernova type Ia data. As a…
A system of particles is studied in which the stochastic processes are one-particle type-change (or one-particle diffusion) and multi-particle annihilation. It is shown that, if the annihilation rate tends to zero but the initial values of…
The secluded dark matter resides within a hidden sector and self-annihilates into lighter mediators which subsequently decay to the Standard Model (SM) particles. Depending on the coupling strength of the mediator to the SM, the hidden…
We present, for the first time, a complete treatment of strongly-interacting dark matter capture in planets, taking Earth as an example. We focus on light dark matter and the heating of Earth by dark matter annihilation, addressing a number…
We study the effects of dark matter annihilation during and after the cosmic recombination epoch on the cosmic microwave background anisotropy, taking into account the detailed energy deposition of the annihilation products. It is found…
Galaxy formation requires a process that continually heats gas and quenches star formation in order to reproduce the observed shape of the luminosity function of bright galaxies. To accomplish this, current models invoke heating from…
We propose that the dark matter abundance is set by the decoupling of inelastic scattering instead of annihilations. This coscattering mechanism is generically realized if dark matter scatters against states of comparable mass from the…