Related papers: Conversion-driven freeze-out: Dark matter genesis …
Chemical equilibrium is a commonly made assumption in the freeze-out calculation of coannihilating dark matter. We explore the possible failure of this assumption and find a new conversion-driven freeze-out mechanism. Considering a…
We explore dark matter genesis beyond the WIMP paradigm, focusing on the mechanism of conversion-driven freeze-out. This mechanism enables the thermalization of dark matter despite its very weak couplings. While the scenario evades…
Dark Matter (DM) may belong to a hidden sector that is only feebly interacting with the Standard Model (SM) and may have never been in thermal equilibrium in the Early Universe. In this case, the observed abundance of dark matter particles…
We present a new paradigm for achieving thermal relic dark matter. The mechanism arises when a nearly secluded dark sector is thermalized with the Standard Model after reheating. The freezeout process is a number-changing 3->2 annihilation…
In the standard thermal relic scenario, dark matter remains in chemical equilibrium with the Standard Model radiation bath until freeze-out occurs at $T \sim m_X/20$, where $m_X$ is the dark matter mass. In this familiar class of models,…
The freeze-out of dark matter (DM) depends on the evolution of the DM temperature. The DM temperature does not have to follow the standard model one, when the elastic scattering is not sufficient to maintain the kinetic equilibrium. We…
We present a new paradigm of dark matter freeze-out, where the annihilation of dark matter particles is catalyzed. We discuss in detail the regime that the depletion of dark matter proceeds via $2\chi \to 2A'$ and $3A' \to 2\chi$ processes,…
We provide a simple model of vector dark matter (DM) which can realize the recently proposed freeze-out mechanism with catalyzed annihilation. In our setup, a vector DM field $X_\mu$ and a catalyst field $C_\mu$ is unified by an SU(2)$_D$…
The WIMP dark matter (DM) hypothesis now is in an awkward position, owing to the stronger and stronger exclusion from DM direct detection. In this article we design a mechanism to evade this constraint.The idea is simple. DM has a…
We present a systematic cosmological study of a universe in which the visible sector is coupled, albeit very weakly, to a hidden sector comprised of its own set of particles and interactions. Assuming that dark matter (DM) resides in the…
At the tail of its velocity distribution, cold dark matter (DM) can annihilate at finite temperature to states heavier than itself. We explore the possibility that DM freezeout is dictated by these "forbidden annihilations" at the…
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…
We consider the possibility that thermalized dark-matter particles acquire their mass thanks to the spontaneous breaking of a symmetry below some critical temperature. We describe the regime where a freeze out mechanism takes place shortly…
We show that a general semi-annihilation scenario, in which a pair of dark matter (DM) particles annihilate to an anti-DM, and an unstable state that can mix with or decay to standard model states, can lead to particle anti-particle…
The nature of dark matter (DM) remains one of the most important unanswered questions in particle physics. Here, we propose a novel scenario for DM in which weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) can freeze-in due to a first-order…
The internal structure of the Standard Model implies a natural $\mathbb{Z}_4 \times \mathbb{Z}_3$ discrete gauge symmetry. Cancellation of the corresponding Dai--Freed anomalies requires the introduction of three right-handed neutrinos and…
Dark matter could emerge along with the Higgs as a composite pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson $\chi$ with decay constant $f\sim \mathrm{TeV}$. This type of WIMP is especially compelling because its leading interaction with the Standard Model,…
An internally thermalized dark matter (DM) with only gravitational interaction with the standard model (SM) particles at low temperatures, may undergo number-changing self-scatterings in the early Universe, eventually freezing out to the…
We study a novel dark matter production mechanism based on the freeze-in through semi-production, i.e. the inverse semi-annihilation processes. A peculiar feature of this scenario is that the production rate is suppressed by a small initial…
There are many extensions of the Standard Model with a dark matter (DM) candidate obtained via the freeze-out mechanism. It can happen that after all experimental and theoretical constraints are taken into account, all parameter points have…