WIMP abundance and lepton (flavour) asymmetry

Abstract

We investigate how large lepton asymmetries affect the evolution of the early universe at times before big bang nucleosynthesis and in particular how they influence the relic density of WIMP dark matter. In comparison to the standard calculation of the relic WIMP abundance we find a decrease, depending on the lepton flavour asymmetry. We find an effect of up to 20 per cent for lepton flavour asymmetries $l_f=\mathcal{O}(0.1)$.

Comments: 16 pages, 4 figures; v2:minor changes to some wordings