Dark Matter Sommerfeld-enhanced annihilation and Bound-state decay at finite temperature

Abstract

Traditional computations of the dark matter (DM) relic abundance, for models where attractive self-interactions are mediated by light force-carriers and bound states exist, rely on the solution of a coupled system of classical on-shell Boltzmann equations. This idealized description misses important thermal effects caused by the tight coupling among force-carriers and other charged relativistic species. We develop for the first time a comprehensive ab-initio derivation for the description of DM long-range interactions in the presence of a hot and dense plasma background directly from non-equilibrium quantum field theory. Most importantly, the scattering and bound states get strongly mixed in the thermal plasma environment, representing a characteristic difference from a pure vacuum theory computation. The main result of this work is a novel differential equation for the DM number density, written down in a form which is manifestly independent under the choice of what one would interpret as a bound or a scattering state at finite temperature. The collision term, unifying the description of annihilation and bound state decay, turns out to have in general a non-quadratic dependence on the DM number density. This generalizes the form of the conventional Lee-Weinberg equation which is typically adopted to describe the freeze-out process. We prove that our general number density equation is consistent with previous literature results under certain limits.

arXiv comment46 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (66)

• Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
• Supersymmetric Dark Matter
• A Theory of Dark Matter
• Dark Matter Self-interactions and Small Scale Structure
• The Waning of the WIMP? A Review of Models, Searches, and Constraints
• Constraints on the Self-Interaction Cross-Section of Dark Matter from Numerical Simulations of the Merging Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657-5
• Is the Lightest Kaluza-Klein Particle a Viable Dark Matter Candidate?
• Cosmology and Astrophysics of Minimal Dark Matter
• Non-Perturbative Effect on Dark Matter Annihilation and Gamma Ray Signature from Galactic Center
• Astrophysical Signatures of Secluded Dark Matter
• Cosmological Simulations with Self-Interacting Dark Matter II: Halo Shapes vs. Observations
• Real-time static potential in hot QCD
• Non-perturbative Effect on Thermal Relic Abundance of Dark Matter
• Explosive Dark Matter Annihilation
• Static quark-antiquark pairs at finite temperature
• Superweakly Interacting Massive Particles
• Axinos as Cold Dark Matter
• Sommerfeld Enhancements for Thermal Relic Dark Matter
• Real and imaginary-time $Q\bar{Q}$ correlators in a thermal medium
• In Wino Veritas? Indirect Searches Shed Light on Neutralino Dark Matter
• Heavy Dark Matter Through the Higgs Portal
• WIMPonium and Boost Factors for Indirect Dark Matter Detection
• A Test of the Collisional Dark Matter Hypothesis from Cluster Lensing
• Minimal Dark Matter predictions for galactic positrons, anti-protons, photons
• Bound-state formation for thermal relic dark matter and unitarity
• The Sommerfeld enhancement for dark matter with an excited state
• Cosmological Implications of Dark Matter Bound States
• Relic densities including Sommerfeld enhancements in the MSSM
• Dark Matter's secret liaisons: phenomenology of a dark U(1) sector with bound states
• Converting non-relativistic dark matter to radiation
• Heavy quarkonium in any channel in resummed hot QCD
• Dark-matter bound states from Feynman diagrams
• WIMPonium
• Self-consistent Calculation of the Sommerfeld Enhancement
• Relic density of wino-like dark matter in the MSSM
• Radiative bound-state-formation cross-sections for dark matter interacting via a Yukawa potential
• Thermal decoupling and the smallest subhalo mass in dark matter models with Sommerfeld-enhanced annihilation rates
• Effects of Bound States on Dark Matter Annihilation
• Asymmetric thermal-relic dark matter: Sommerfeld-enhanced freeze-out, annihilation signals and unitarity bounds
• The number density of a charged relic
• Capture and Decay of Electroweak WIMPonium
• Asymmetric dark matter: residual annihilations and self-interactions
• Effects of QCD bound states on dark matter relic abundance
• The Sommerfeld enhancement for scalar particles and application to sfermion co-annihilation regions
• Radiative bound-state formation in unbroken perturbative non-Abelian theories and implications for dark matter
• Rapid thermal co-annihilation through bound states in QCD
• Scenarios for Gluino Coannihilation
• Thermal dark matter co-annihilating with a strongly interacting scalar
• Gaugino coannihilations
• Wino Dark Matter and Future dSph Observations
• Reannihilation of self-interacting dark matter
• On thermal corrections to near-threshold annihilation
• Re-derived overclosure bound for the inert doublet model
• The last refuge of mixed wino-Higgsino dark matter
• Higgs Enhancement for the Dark Matter Relic Density
• SUSY-QCD corrections to stop annihilation into electroweak final states including Coulomb enhancement effects
• Radiative corrections to co-annihilation processes
• Wino Dark Matter in light of the AMS-02 2015 Data
• Heavy quark chemical equilibration rate as a transport coefficient
• A Sommerfeld Toolbox for Colored Dark Sectors
• Experimental Proposal for Achieving Superadditive Communication Capacities with a Binary Quantum Alphabet
• Zero-Range Effective Field Theory for Resonant Wino Dark Matter I. Framework
• Zero-Range Effective Field Theory for Resonant Wino Dark Matter II. Coulomb Resummation
• Bound-state effects for dark matter with Higgs-like mediators
• Zero-Range Effective Field Theory for Resonant Wino Dark Matter III. Annihilation Effects
• Sommerfeld effect in heavy quark chemical equilibration

Cited by in corpus (27)

• Precise WIMP Dark Matter Abundance and Standard Model Thermodynamics
• Coloured coannihilations: Dark matter phenomenology meets non-relativistic EFTs
• Dark Matter bound-state formation at higher order: a non-equilibrium quantum field theory approach
• Freeze-in produced dark matter in the ultra-relativistic regime
• Higgs-mediated bound states in dark-matter models
• Rapid bound-state formation of Dark Matter in the Early Universe
• Dark Matter Bound State Formation in Fermionic $Z_2$ DM model with Light Dark Photon and Dark Higgs Boson
• Impact of Sommerfeld Effect and Bound State Formation in Simplified $t$-Channel Dark Matter Models
• Dark matter bound state formation via emission of a charged scalar
• Indirect searches for dark matter bound state formation and level transitions
• Saha equilibrium for metastable bound states and dark matter freeze-out
• How Heavy can Neutralino Dark Matter be?
• Non-relativistic and potential non-relativistic effective field theories for scalar mediators
• Bound-state formation, dissociation and decays of darkonium with potential non-relativistic Yukawa theory for scalar and pseudoscalar mediators
• Studies of a thermally averaged p-wave Sommerfeld factor
• On the coverage of neutralino dark matter in coannihilations at the upgraded LHC
• Bound states of WIMP dark matter in Higgs-portal models. Part I. Cross-sections and transition rates
• Non-relativistic susceptibility and a dark matter application
• Non-perturbative effects for dark sectors with QCD portals
• Bound states of WIMP dark matter in Higgs-portal models. Part II. Thermal decoupling
• Boosting the dark matter signal with Coulomb resonances
• t-channel dark matter at the LHC -- a whitepaper
• Bound States of Pseudo-Dirac Dark Matter
• The role of unitarisation on dark-matter freeze-out via metastable bound states
• Radiation back-reaction during dark-matter freeze-out via metastable bound states
• Towards a precision calculation of $N_{\mathrm{eff}}$ in the Standard Model IV: Estimating the impact of positronium formation
• A study of potential non-relativistic QED pairs in the Keldysh-Schwinger formalism