# TeV-Scale Thermal WIMPs: Unitarity and its Consequences

## TL;DR

This paper revisits unitarity bounds on thermal WIMP dark matter, showing that bound state effects and Sommerfeld enhancement significantly lower the maximum allowed mass, impacting detection prospects.

## Contribution

It introduces revised unitarity bounds considering bound states and Sommerfeld effects, extending the understanding of thermal WIMP mass limits.

## Key findings

- Unitarity bound lowered from 139 TeV to below 100 TeV for non-self-conjugate dark matter.
- Largest allowed mass for composite dark matter is 1 PeV.
- Bound-state formation affects late-universe annihilation signals.

## Abstract

We re-examine unitarity bounds on the annihilation cross section of thermal-WIMP dark matter. For high-mass pointlike dark matter, it is generic to form WIMP bound states, which, together with Sommerfeld enhancement, affects the relic abundance. We show that these effects lower the unitarity bound from 139 TeV to below 100 TeV for non-self-conjugate dark matter and from 195 TeV (the oft-quoted value of 340 TeV assumes $\Omega_{DM} h^2 = 1$) to 140 TeV for the self-conjugate case. For composite dark matter, for which the unitarity limit on the radius was thought to be mass-independent, we show that the largest allowed mass is 1 PeV. In addition, we find important new effects for annihilation in the late universe. For example, while the production of high-energy light fermions in WIMP annihilation is suppressed by helicity, we show that bound-state formation changes this. Coupled with rapidly improving experimental sensitivity to TeV-range gamma rays, cosmic rays, and neutrinos, our results give new hope to attack the thermal-WIMP mass range from the high-mass end.