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arXiv · 1609.00474

On thermal corrections to near-threshold annihilation

Seyong Kim·M. Laine
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Abstract

We consider non-relativistic "dark" particles interacting through gauge boson exchange. At finite temperature, gauge exchange is modified in many ways: virtual corrections lead to Debye screening; real corrections amount to frequent scatterings of the heavy particles on light plasma constituents; mixing angles change. In a certain temperature and energy range, these effects are of order unity. Taking them into account in a resummed form, we estimate the near-threshold spectrum of kinetically equilibrated annihilating TeV scale particles. Weakly bound states are shown to "melt" below freeze-out, whereas with attractive strong interactions, relevant e.g. for gluinos, bound states boost the annihilation rate by a factor 4...80 with respect to the Sommerfeld estimate, thereby perhaps helping to avoid overclosure of the universe. Modestly non-degenerate dark sector masses and a way to combine the contributions of channels with different gauge and spin structures are also discussed.

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Seyong Kim, M. Laine. 2016-09-02. On thermal corrections to near-threshold annihilation. https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516%2F2017%2F01%2F013

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