# Simplified Phenomenology for Colored Dark Sectors

## TL;DR

This paper investigates simplified models of colored dark sectors where dark matter coannihilates with a strongly interacting particle, analyzing relic density constraints and LHC bounds to identify viable parameter space.

## Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of relic density and collider constraints on models with various spins and color representations of the coannihilating particle, including Sommerfeld effects.

## Key findings

- Relic density constrains dark matter mass up to 10 TeV.
- LHC bounds range from 800 to 1500 GeV.
- Higher energy colliders are needed for full parameter space coverage.

## Abstract

We perform a general study of the relic density and LHC constraints on simplified models where the dark matter coannihilates with a strongly interacting particle X. In these models, the dark matter depletion is driven by the self-annihilation of X to pairs of quarks and gluons through the strong interaction. The phenomenology of these scenarios therefore only depends on the dark matter mass and the mass splitting between dark matter and X as well as the quantum numbers of X. In this paper, we consider simplified models where X can be either a scalar, a fermion or a vector, as well as a color triplet, sextet or octet. We compute the dark matter relic density constraints taking into account Sommerfeld corrections and bound state formation. Furthermore, we examine the restrictions from thermal equilibrium, the lifetime of X and the current and future LHC bounds on X pair production. All constraints are comprehensively presented in the mass splitting versus dark matter mass plane. While the relic density constraints can lead to upper bounds on the dark matter mass ranging from 2 TeV to more than 10 TeV across our models, the prospective LHC bounds range from 800 to 1500 GeV. A full coverage of the strongly coannihilating dark matter parameter space would therefore require hadron colliders with significantly higher center of mass energies.