Dark matter relic density in strongly interacting dark sectors with light vector mesons

Author:

Elias Bernreuther, Nicoline Hemme, Felix Kahlhoefer, Suchita Kulkarni

Keyword:

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph), Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)

journal:

FERMILAB-PUB-23-744-T, TTP23-057, P3H-23-096

date:

2023-11-28 00:00:00

Abstract

Stable dark matter particles may arise as pseudo-Goldstone bosons from the confinement of dark quarks interacting via a non-Abelian gauge force. Their relic abundance is determined not by annihilations into visible particles but by dark pion number-changing processes within the dark sector, such as $3 \pi_D \to 2 \pi_D$. However, if the dark vector mesons $\rho_D$ are light enough for $3 \pi_D \to \pi_D \rho_D$ annihilations to be kinematically allowed, this process dominates and significantly delays freeze-out. As a result, the preferred dark matter mass scale increases and bounds from the Bullet Cluster can be evaded.

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