Related papers: TeV-Scale Thermal WIMPs: Unitarity and its Consequ…
We show that the relic abundance of thermal dark matter annihilating via a long-range interaction, is significantly affected by the formation and decay of dark matter bound states in the early universe, if the dark matter mass is above a…
Model-independent theoretical upper bound on the thermal dark matter (DM) mass can be derived from the maximum inelastic DM cross-section featuring the whole observed DM abundance. We deploy partial-wave unitarity of the scattering matrix…
We consider a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter (DM) annihilating into all possible Standard Model (SM) particle pairs, including the SM neutrinos, via $s$-wave processes and derive the branching ratio independent upper…
We study the general properties of the freezeout of a thermal relic. We give analytic estimates of the relic abundance for an arbitrary freezeout process, showing when instantaneous freezeout is appropriate and how it can be corrected when…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) have long reigned as one of the leading classes of dark matter candidates. The observed dark matter abundance can be naturally obtained by freezeout of weak-scale dark matter annihilations in the…
Using the upper bound on the inelastic reaction cross-section implied by S-matrix unitarity, we derive the thermally averaged maximum dark matter (DM) annihilation rate for general $k \rightarrow 2$ number-changing reactions, with $k \geq…
We summarize here our studies \cite{Chu:2022xuh,Chu:2023jyb,Chu:2024rrv} on two distinct scenarios for MeV-mass thermal dark matter freeze-out. First, we determine the minimal viable mass for dark matter below tens of MeV, considering…
If dark matter (DM) is a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) that is a thermal relic of the early Universe, then its total self-annihilation cross section is revealed by its present-day mass density. The canonical thermally averaged…
The unitary bound restricts thermal relics to be lighter than $100$ TeV. This work investigates the production of ultraheavy dark matter and WIMPs in the presence of primordial black holes. Firstly, we describe how Hawking evaporation can…
A thermal relic, often referred to as a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP), is a particle produced during the early evolution of the Universe whose present (relic) abundance depends only on its mass and its thermally averaged…
We present constraints on the annihilation cross section of WIMP dark matter based on the joint statistical analysis of four dwarf galaxies with VERITAS. These results are derived from an optimized photon weighting statistical technique…
The thermal history of the universe before the epoch of nucleosynthesis is unknown. The maximum temperature in the radiation-dominated era, which we will refer to as the reheat temperature, may have been as low as 0.7 MeV. In this paper we…
We examine the constraints on models of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter from the recent observations of the Galactic center by the High Energy Spectroscopic System (HESS) telescope. We analyze canonical WIMP…
Thermal dark matter that couples more strongly to electrons and photons than to neutrinos will heat the electron-photon plasma relative to the neutrino background if it becomes nonrelativistic after the neutrinos decouple from the thermal…
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)…
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…
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 consider dark matter consisting of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and revisit in detail its thermal evolution in the early universe, with a particular focus on models where the annihilation rate is enhanced by the…
A new calculation of the $\bar{p}/p$ ratio in cosmic rays is compared to the recent PAMELA data. The good match up to 100 GeV allows to set constraints on exotic contributions from thermal WIMP dark matter candidates. We derive stringent…
Dark Matter annihilations after recombination and during the epoch of structure formation deposit energy in the primordial intergalactic medium, producing reionization and heating. We investigate the constraints that are imposed by the…