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WIMPonium and Boost Factors for Indirect Dark Matter Detection

3 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

3 Pith papers citing it
abstract

We argue that WIMP dark matter can annihilate via long-lived "WIMPonium" bound states in reasonable particle physics models of dark matter (DM). WIMPonium bound states can occur at or near threshold leading to substantial enhancements in the DM annihilation rate, closely related to the Sommerfeld effect. Large "boost factor" amplifications in the annihilation rate can thus occur without large density enhancements, possibly preferring colder less dense objects such as dwarf galaxies as locations for indirect DM searches. The radiative capture to and transitions among the WIMPonium states generically lead to a rich energy spectrum of annihilation products, with many distinct lines possible in the case of 2-body decays to $\gamma\gamma$ or $\gamma Z$ final states. The existence of multiple radiative capture modes further enhances the total annihilation rate, and the detection of the lines would give direct over-determined information on the nature and self-interactions of the DM particles.

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hep-ph 3

years

2026 2 2019 1

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representative citing papers

On the equivalence of unitarization prescriptions for the Sommerfeld enhancement

hep-ph · 2026-05-06 · accept · novelty 7.0

Different unitarization prescriptions for the Sommerfeld enhancement are equivalent to leading order and yield a regulator-independent formula for multi-state systems written only in terms of the standard enhancement factor, the hard annihilation amplitude, and the long-range S-matrix.

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