Radiative Corrections to Light Thermal Pseudo-Dirac Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper examines how radiative corrections influence the predictions of light thermal pseudo-Dirac dark matter models, emphasizing their importance for accurate experimental interpretation and parameter space mapping.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of next-to-leading order corrections in dark matter annihilation and scattering within a dark photon model, highlighting their impact on relic density and detection prospects.

Findings

Radiative corrections can significantly alter relic density estimates.

Corrections depend on dark sector coupling strength and mass ratios.

Factorization into yield parameter Y can lead to inaccuracies.

Abstract

Light thermal dark matter has emerged as an attractive theoretical possibility and a promising target for discovery at experiments in the near future. Such scenarios generically invoke mediators with very small couplings to the Standard Model, but moderately strong couplings within the dark sector, calling into question theoretical estimates based on the lowest order of perturbation theory. As an example, we focus on a scenario in which (pseudo)-Dirac fermion dark matter is connected to the standard model via a dark photon charged under a new $U(1)^{\prime}$ extension of the standard model, and we investigate the impact of the next-to-leading order corrections to annihilation and scattering. We find that radiative corrections can significantly impact model predictions for the relic density and scattering cross-section, depending on the strength of the dark sector coupling and ratio of the dark matter to mediator mass. We also show why factorization into the yield parameter $Y$ typically presented in literature leads to imprecision. Our results are necessary to accurately map experimental searches into the model parameter space and assess their ability to reach thermal production targets.