Related papers: Acoustically driven dark matter freeze-out
We study the effects of modifying the expansions history of the Universe on Dark Matter freezeout. We derived a modified Boltzmann equation for freeze-out for an arbitrary energy density in the early Universe and provide an analytic…
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 highlight the general scenario of dark matter freeze-out whilst the energy density of the universe is dominated by a decoupled non-relativistic species. Decoupling during matter domination changes the freeze-out dynamics, since the…
The universe has evolved through several phases as its various constituents dominated its energy content. Candidate dark matter particles may have undergone freeze-out during any such phase. While the standard freeze-out scenarios have been…
We propose a novel scenario to obtain the correct relic abundance for thermally under-produced dark matter. This scenario utilizes a strongly first-order phase transition at temperature $T_{\rm PT}$ that gives rise to dark matter mass $m$.…
A novel paradigm for thermal dark matter (DM), termed "bouncing dark matter", is presented. In canonical thermal DM scenarios, the DM abundance falls exponentially as the temperature drops below the mass of DM, until thermal freezeout…
Recently we studied the direct detection of multi-component dark matter with arbitrary local energy densities. Although the generation of the dark matter relic abundance is model-dependent, and in principle could be only indirectly related…
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…
We investigate the characteristic modifications in the evolving cosmological perturbations when dark energy interacts with dust-like matter, causing the latter's background energy density fall off with time faster than usual. Focusing in…
Standard lore states that there is tension between the need to accommodate the relic density of a weakly interacting massive particle and direct searches for dark matter. However, the estimation of the relic density rests on an…
We discuss the relic abundance of asymmetric Dark Matter particles in modified cosmological scenarios where the Hubble rate is changed with respect to the standard cosmological scenario. The modified Hubble rate leaves its imprint on the…
Isocurvature fluctuations, where the relative number density of particle species spatially varies, can be generated from initially adiabatic, or curvature, fluctuations if the various species fall out of or were never in thermal…
If a fraction of the dark matter is unstable and decays into dark radiation at around the time of matter-radiation equality, it could impact the expansion history of the universe in a way that helps to ameliorate the long-standing tension…
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…
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…
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,…
If the dark matter is produced in the early universe prior to Big Bang nucleosynthesis, a modified cosmological history can drastically affect the abundance of relic dark matter particles. Here, we assume that an additional species to…
The generation of a kination-dominated phase by a quintessential exponential model is investigated and the parameters of the model are restricted so that a number of observational constraints (originating from nucleosynthesis, the present…
Measurements of the primordial element abundances provide us with an important probe of our universe's early thermal history, allowing us to constrain the expansion rate and composition of our universe as early as $\sim 1 \, {\rm s}$ after…
A phenomenological model of dark energy that tracks the baryonic and cold dark matter at early times but resembles a cosmological constant at late times is explored. In the transition between these two regimes, the dark energy density drops…