Dark matter production in the early Universe: beyond the thermal WIMP paradigm

By Howard Baer, Kiwoon Choi, Jihn E. Kim, L. Roszkowski. 2014

353 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Increasingly stringent limits from LHC searches for new physics, coupled with lack of convincing signals of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) in dark matter searches, have tightly constrained many realizations of the standard paradigm of thermally produced WIMPs as cold dark matter. In this article, we review more generally both thermally and non-thermally produced dark matter (DM). One may classify DM models into two broad categories: one involving bosonic coherent motion (BCM) and the other involving WIMPs. BCM and WIMP candidates need, respectively, some approximate global symmetries and almost exact discrete symmetries. Supersymmetric axion models are highly motivated since they emerge from compelling and elegant solutions to the two fine-tuning problems of the Standard Model: the strong CP problem and the gauge hierarchy problem. We review here non-thermal relics in a general setup, but we also pay particular attention to the rich cosmological properties of various aspects of mixed SUSY/axion dark matter candidates which can involve both WIMPs and BCM in an interwoven manner. We also review briefly a panoply of alternative thermal and non-thermal DM candidates.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/af66d2bfb28dad1ca2735a7600f3d73525ebe2be

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. V. Poulin
2. D. Marsh
3. P. Serpico
4. J. Silk
5. M. Raidal
6. G. Arcadi
7. Julien Lesgourgues
8. Tilman Plehn

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. V. Poulin
2. D. Marsh
3. M. Raidal
4. G. Arcadi
5. P. Serpico
6. Julien Lesgourgues
7. Tilman Plehn
8. Abdelhak Djouadi

Citations in the corpus

• WIMP dark matter candidates and searches—current status and future prospects (2017, methodology): “Many WIMP particle candidates and prospects for their detection have been covered in several papers, starting from the early comprehensive review [5] (which, nearly thirty years later, still remains a very useful classic reference) and more recently in [6–9] and [10] which, although mostly devoted t”
• Yet Another Introduction to Dark Matter (2017, background): “ginally been discussed by Griest and Seckel in Ref. [42]. A nice systematic discussion of recent research aiming can be found in Ref. [43]. For models of non-WIMP dark matter, the review article Ref. [44] provides many details. A very good review of axions is given in Roberto Peccei’s notes [45]. wh”
• A fresh look at linear cosmological constraints on a decaying Dark Matter component (2016, methodology): “In SUSY scenarios incorporating the Peccei-Quinn mechanism [14, 15] to solve the strong CP problem, the role of dark radiation and unstable DM parents/byproducts might be played by the axion [16, 17], its supersymmetric partner the axino, and gravitinos (see for instance [18] for an early proposal i”
• Dark Matter through the Higgs portal (2019, background): “through a non–thermal mechanism and/or modifications of the cosmological history of the Universe [274–278]) even outside the “PLANCK” isocontours.”
• Cosmological Moduli and the Post-Inflationary Universe: A Critical Review (2015, background): “Alternatively, non-thermal dark matter is produced via the decay of heavier particles into a long-lived final state and does not require thermal equilibrium [12, 31–36] (for reviews, see [19, 37, 38], and for recent related work [39–41]).”
• Galaxy UV-luminosity function and reionization constraints on axion dark matter (2014, background): “For a review of DM models with supersymmetric axions see Baer et al. (2014).”