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GeV-Scale Thermal WIMPs: Not Even Slightly Dead

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

3 Pith papers citing it
abstract

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) have long reigned as one of the leading classes of dark matter candidates. The observed dark matter abundance can be naturally obtained by freezeout of weak-scale dark matter annihilations in the early universe. This "thermal WIMP" scenario makes direct predictions for the total annihilation cross section that can be tested in present-day experiments. While the dark matter mass constraint can be as high as $m_\chi\gtrsim100$ GeV for particular annihilation channels, the constraint on the total cross section has not been determined. We construct the first model-independent limit on the WIMP total annihilation cross section, showing that allowed combinations of the annihilation-channel branching ratios considerably weaken the sensitivity. For thermal WIMPs with s-wave $2\rightarrow2$ annihilation to visible final states, we find the dark matter mass is only known to be $m_\chi\gtrsim20$ GeV. This is the strongest largely model-independent lower limit on the mass of thermal-relic WIMPs, together with the upper limit on the mass from the unitarity bound ($m_\chi\lesssim 100$ TeV), it defines what we call the "WIMP window". To probe the remaining mass range, we outline ways forward.

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hep-ph 3

years

2025 2 2024 1

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representative citing papers

Dark Matter

hep-ph · 2024-06-03 · unverdicted · novelty 2.0

A review summarizing current observational, experimental, and theoretical results on dark matter.

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Showing 3 of 3 citing papers.

  • The Muonic Portal to Vector Dark Matter:connecting precision muon physics, cosmology, and colliders hep-ph · 2025-10-21 · unverdicted · none · ref 89 · internal anchor

    A new model with SU(2)_D symmetry and vector-like muons mediates vector dark matter, simultaneously addressing relic abundance and muon g-2 while identifying an off-resonance suppression mechanism for light DM and deriving collider bounds.

  • GeV-scale thermal dark matter from dark photons: tightly constrained, yet allowed hep-ph · 2025-07-15 · conditional · none · ref 39 · internal anchor

    In a dark-photon-mediated Dirac fermionic DM model, only narrow resonant regions with small dark-sector coupling allow the candidate to saturate the full relic density while evading current direct and indirect detection bounds.

  • Dark Matter hep-ph · 2024-06-03 · unverdicted · none · ref 155 · internal anchor

    A review summarizing current observational, experimental, and theoretical results on dark matter.