Higgs Enhancement for the Dark Matter Relic Density

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the Higgs boson can significantly enhance the annihilation of TeV-scale dark matter through long-range effects, impacting relic density calculations and experimental searches.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the 125 GeV Higgs can cause Sommerfeld enhancement of dark matter annihilation, a previously underappreciated long-range effect influencing relic density.

Findings

Higgs-mediated Sommerfeld enhancement can significantly deplete dark matter density.

The interplay between Higgs and other mediators affects the enhancement magnitude.

Implications for dark matter detection experiments are discussed.

Abstract

We consider the long-range effect of the Higgs on the density of thermal-relic dark matter. While the electroweak gauge boson and gluon exchange have been previously studied, the Higgs is typically thought to mediate only contact interactions. We show that the Sommerfeld enhancement due to a 125 GeV Higgs can deplete TeV-scale dark matter significantly, and describe how the interplay between the Higgs and other mediators influences this effect. We discuss the importance of the Higgs enhancement in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, and its implications for experiments.