Bound states in dark matter phenomenology

par Kalliopi Petraki (LPTHE Paris)

jeudi 4 févr. 2016, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Paris

Petit Amphi (Annecy-le-Vieux)

Dark matter with long-range interactions, mediated by a light or massless force carrier, appears in a variety of theories with different motivation. Examples include the self-interacting dark matter scenario, which is motivated by the observed galactic structure, as well as models constructed to explain observed astrophysical signals. Notably, even the Weak interactions of the Standard Model exhibit long-range behaviour if the interacting particles are heavier than a few TeV. An important implication of long-range interactions is the existence of bound states. The formation of dark-matter bound states in the early universe and/or in the dense environment of haloes today may affect the phenomenology of dark matter in many ways. I will showcase the effect of bound-state formation and decay on the abundance of thermal relic dark matter. I will then describe a field-theoretic framework for the computation of bound-state related processes in dark-matter phenomenology, which can be employed both for TeV-scale WIMPs and hidden-sector dark matter.