WIMPs Without Weakness: Generalized Mass Window with Entropy Injection

TL;DR

This paper explores a generalized dark matter freeze-out scenario involving entropy injection from decaying particles, allowing for viable dark matter candidates outside traditional weak-scale parameters and suggesting early matter epoch signatures as detection avenues.

Contribution

It introduces a new framework for dark matter freeze-out with entropy injection, expanding viable mass and cross section ranges beyond conventional models.

Findings

Dark matter abundance can be achieved without weak-scale interactions.

The model accommodates both heavy and light dark matter candidates.

Early matter-dominant epoch signatures are promising detection strategies.

Abstract

We study general freeze-out scenarios where an arbitrary number of initial and final dark matter particles participate in the number-changing freeze-out interaction. We consider a simple sector with two particle species undergoing such a thermal freeze-out; one of the relics is stable and gives rise to the dark matter today, while the other one decays to the Standard Model, injecting significant entropy into the thermal bath that dilutes the dark matter abundance. We show that this setup can lead to a stable relic population that reproduces the observed dark matter abundance without requiring weak scale masses or couplings. The final dark matter abundance is estimated analytically. We carry out this calculation for arbitrary temperature dependence in the freeze-out process and identify the viable dark matter mass and cross section ranges that explain the observed dark matter abundance. This setup can be used to open parameter space for both heavy (above the unitarity bound) or light (sub-GeV) dark matter candidates. We point out that the best strategy for probing most parts of our parameter space is to look for signatures of an early matter-dominant epoch.