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  • Open Access

Heavy Thermal Dark Matter from a New Collision Mechanism

Eric David Kramer* and Eric Kuflik†

Noam Levi‡ and Nadav Joseph Outmezguine§

Joshua T. Ruderman∥

  • Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel

  • School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel

  • Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA

  • *ericdavidkramer@gmail.com
  • †eric.kuflik@mail.huji.ac.il
  • ‡noam@mail.tau.ac.il
  • §Nadav.Out@gmail.com
  • ∥ruderman@nyu.edu
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 081802 – Published 22 February, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.081802

Abstract

We propose a new thermal freeze-out mechanism that results in dark matter masses exceeding the unitarity bound by many orders of magnitude, without violating perturbative unitarity or modifying the standard cosmology. The process determining the relic abundance is χζ†→ζζ, where χ is the dark matter candidate. For mζ<mχ<3mζ, χ is cosmologically long-lived and scatters against the exponentially more abundant ζ. Therefore, such a process allows for exponentially heavier dark matter for the same interaction strength as a particle undergoing ordinary 2→2 freeze-out, or equivalently, exponentially weaker interactions for the same mass. We demonstrate this mechanism in a leptophilic dark matter model, which allows for dark matter masses up to 109  GeV.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 081802– Published 22 February, 2021
  • Received 13 May 2020
  • Revised 2 December 2020
  • Accepted 2 February 2021
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