Bound-state formation for thermal relic dark matter and unitarity

Abstract

We show that the relic abundance of thermal dark matter annihilating via a long-range interaction, is significantly affected by the formation and decay of dark matter bound states in the early universe, if the dark matter mass is above a few TeV. We determine the coupling required to obtain the observed dark matter density, taking into account both the direct 2-to-2 annihilations and the formation of bound states, and provide an analytical fit. We argue that the unitarity limit on the inelastic cross-section is realized only if dark matter annihilates via a long-range interaction, and we determine the upper bound on the mass of thermal-relic dark matter to be about 197 (139) TeV for (non)-self-conjugate dark matter.

Comments: v2: 15 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Expanded discussion (also with respect to the published version). Effect on dark matter density shown, numerical fit for the coupling provided, timeline plot added. Results unchanged