Boosting Assisted Annihilation for a Cosmologically Safe MeV Scale Dark Matter

Abstract

Assisted annihilation generates thermal sub-GeV dark matter through a novel annihilation between a pair of dark matter and standard-model-like states, called the "assister". We show that, depending on the mass hierarchy between the assister and dark matter, there can be either a suppression or a boost of the effective cross section. This augmentation enables the possibility of $\mathcal{O}(100)$ MeV scale dark matter with perturbative coupling that saturates the relic density estimates while being relatively insulated from cosmological constraints like big bang nucleosynthesis and cosmic microwave background.

arXiv comment13 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; minor changes in text; added new discussion on assister search; references updated; matches published version

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• A multi-component SIMP model with $U(1{)}_X\to Z_2\times Z_3$
• SIMPly add a dark photon
• Resonant Assisted Annihilation
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