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arXiv · 2007.03696

Precise dark matter relic abundance in decoupled sectors

Abstract

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 the freeze-out process to such scenarios and perform precision calculations of the annihilation cross-section required to match the observed DM abundance. We demonstrate that the difference to the canonical value of this 'thermal cross-section' is generally sizeable, and can reach orders of magnitude. Our results directly impact the interpretation of DM searches in hidden sector scenarios.

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Torsten Bringmann, Paul Frederik Depta, Marco Hufnagel, Kai Schmidt-Hoberg. 2021-05-18. Precise dark matter relic abundance in decoupled sectors. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2021.136341

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